Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen
10 best books like Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen (Reymundo Sánchez): Always Running, Estrella's Quinceanera, The Brothers Torres, Adios to My Old Life, The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez, The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland, Chango's Fire, Jumped, Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Latino in the United States, Locas
| Author | Luis J. Rodríguez |
| ISBN | 0743276914 |
The award-winning and bestselling classic memoir about a young Chicano gang member surviving the dangerous streets of East Los Angeles, now featuring a new introduction by the author.
Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, hailed as a New York Times notable book, and read by hundreds...
| Author | Malin Alegria |
| ISBN | 0689878109 |
For as long as Estrella Alvarez can remember, her mother has been planning to throw her an elaborate quinceañera for her fifteenth birthday -- complete with a mariachi band, cheesy decorations, and a hideous dress. Just thinking about her quince makes Estrella cringe. But her mother insists that...
| Author | Coert Voorhees |
| ISBN | 1423103041 |
Frankie Towers has always looked up to his older brother, Steve, and with good reason. Steve is a popular senior who always gets what he wants: girls, a soccer scholarship, and--lately--street cred. Frankie, on the other hand, spends his time shooting off fireworks with his best friend Zach, working...
| Author | Barbara Caridad Ferrer |
| ISBN | 1416524738 |
Does a seventeen-year-old from Miami have what it takes to be the next big Latin superstar? And does she really want it? As a talented singer-guitarist with a dream of going pro, Alegría Montero is getting fed up with the endless, boring parade of quinceañeras and other family party gigs. She's longing...
| Author | Alan Sitomer |
| ISBN | 1423110722 |
Sonia is a Mexican American whose parents came to the United States illegally for the American dream. Sonia is like any ordinary Hispanic teenager who has to do all the chores and cook, her mom expects her to do everything especially now since she is pregnant with twins. Sonia has a hard working dad who...
The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland
| Author | Robyn C. Spencer |
| ISBN | 0822362864 |
In The Revolution Has Come Robyn C. Spencer traces the Black Panther Party's organizational evolution in Oakland, California, where hundreds of young people came to political awareness and journeyed to adulthood as members. Challenging the belief that the Panthers were a projection of the leadership,...
| Author | Ernesto Quiñonez |
| ISBN | 0060565640 |
In New York City's Spanish Harlem, Julio and Maritza are each searching for a path that will give their lives meaning, even if it's shadowed by controversy. Julio is an arsonist for hire, pocketing thousands of dollars from investors eager to capitalize on more expensive real estate. But when he has...
| Author | Rita Williams-Garcia |
| ISBN | 0060760915 |
The wrong angle Trina: "Hey," I say, though I don't really know them. The boyed-up basketball girl barely moves. The others, her girls, step aside. It's okay if they don't speak. I know how it is. They can't all be Trina. Dominique: Some stupid little flit cuts right in between us and is like, "Hey." Like...
Similar to my own experience, Lori Marie Carlson started studying Spanish as a pre-adolescent, fostering a lifelong appreciation for both the language and the culture. When Carlson was growing up, Spanish meant Spain and all things Ibero-centric. Yet, after choosing Latin American studies as the...
| Author | Yxta Maya Murray |
| ISBN | 0802135641 |
Locas tells a violent and poignant story set in the heart of the rough L.A. neighborhood Echo Park. Lucia and Cecilia are the girlfriend and sister of the rising young loco whose gun trade is about to explode into the big business of drugs. When their world starts to split apart under the vicious pressure...
| Author | Susan Kuklin |
| ISBN | 0805079505 |
No Choirboy takes readers inside America's prisons, and allows inmates sentenced to death as teenagers to speak for themselves. In their own voices—raw and uncensored—they talk about their lives in prison, and share their thoughts and feelings about how they ended up there. Susan Kuklin also...
This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang
| Author | Samuel Logan |
| ISBN | 1401323243 |
Like any American teenager, Brenda Paz spent much of her time with her friends. They would go to parties, listen to music, and show off their cars late into the night. But Brenda and her friends belonged to the Mara Salvatrucha--the MS-13--the most violent gang in America, and in addition to enjoying...
East Side Stories: Gang Life in East L.A.
| Author | Joseph Rodriguez |
| ISBN | 1576870723 |
In his interview, Luis Rodríguez explains that the demonization and false glorification of gang life has done much disservice to the termination of gang activity, activity which he defines as "90% boredom." What's the key to reducing gang violence and improving inner-city lives? To the dissolution...
War of the Bloods in My Veins: A Street Soldier's March Toward Redemption
| Author | DaShaun Morris |
| ISBN | 1416548467 |
DaShaun Morris's story is one with which many people are familiar: broken home, broken neighborhoods, internalized rage, and seduced by the power and relative affluence offered by the criminal streets. To those who have gone beyond stereotypes and political tropes to truly research the symptoms...
Once a King, Always a King
| Author | Sanchez Raymundo |
| ISBN | 1904132448 |
This raw, brutal memoir traces Sanchez's struggle - after 10 harrowing years of senseless killings, initiation beatings and drug deals - to leave the Latin Kings and create a 'normal' life for himself. It isn't easy, and soon enough Sanchez backslides into drugs, sex and violence. This time, however,...
Inside the Crips: Life Inside L.A.'s Most Notorious Gang
| Author | Ann Pearlman |
| ISBN | 0312329296 |
You can't blame other people for crimes you're guilty of yourself!
‘Inside the Crips’ is such a difficult book to review because even as I start typing I still don’t know if it deserves a 5 Star or a 3 Star. “Give it a 4 Star then,” I hear you shout. No, I can’t sit on the fence like that....
| Author | Gini Sikes |
| ISBN | 0385474326 |
Dismissed by the police as mere adjuncts to or gofers for male gangs, girl gang members are in fact often as emotionally closed off and dangerous as their male counterparts. Carrying razor blades in their mouths and guns in their jackets for defense, they initiate drive-by shootings, carry out car jackings,...
Running with the Devil: The True Story of the ATF's Infiltration of the Hells Angels
| Author | Kerrie Droban |
| ISBN | 1599214490 |
The infamous Sonny Barger once declared that the Hells Angels would never be infiltrated. Running with the Devil chronicles the story of the ATF sting and the two undercover agents who risked their lives to prove him wrong. For two years, they posed as members of a Mexican renegade motorcycle club,...
Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir
| Author | Stanley Tookie Williams |
| ISBN | 1416544496 |
A gripping tale of personal revolution by a man who went from Crips co-founder to Nobel Peace Prize nominee, author, and antigang activist
When his L.A. neighborhood was threatened by gangbangers, Stanley Tookie Williams and a friend formed the Crips, but what began as protection became...
Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism
| Author | Uriel Quesada |
| ISBN | 1477307303 |
"These narratives are powerful expressions of the experiences of lesbians, gay men, and trans activists from a variety of Latina/o communities. This history exists nowhere else." (Marcia M. Gallo, Assistant Professor of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of Different Daughters:...
Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
| Author | Sanyika Shakur |
| ISBN | 0802141447 |
"After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of rival gang members, twelve-year-old Kody Scott was initiated into the L.A. gang the Crips. He quickly matured into one of the most formidable Crip combat soldiers, earning the name “Monster” for committing acts of brutality and...
And the Spirit Moved Them: The Lost Radical History of America's First Feminists
“Let me suggest, then, that the opening Chapter go farther back than 1848. . . . From the time of the first Convention on Women—in New York 1837—the battle began.” — Lucretia Mott, to Elizabeth Cady Stanton
A decade prior to the Seneca Falls Convention, black and white women joined...
| Author | Carlos Frías |
| ISBN | 1416559515 |
Carlos Frías, an award-winning journalist and the American-born son of Cuban exiles, grew up hearing about his parents' homeland only in parables. Their Cuba, the one they left behind four decades ago, was ethereal. It existed, for him, only in their anecdotes, and in the family that remained in Cuba...
Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature
| Author | Qwo-Li Driskill |
| ISBN | 0816529078 |
This book is an imagining.” So begins this collection examining critical, Indigenous-centered approaches to understanding gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) lives and communities and the creative implications of queer theory in Native studies. This book...
