What if a nation was truly controlled by a purely capitalistic society? What if the symbol of that society came in the form of the modern gangster? In the country of Begistan, power belonged to the Marzins, a family with a criminal legacy that tries to hold on to everything they have as their patriarch, a former old-school mob boss turned president of the country, is assassinated. As some of his children seek revenge for his murder, they also form and break alliances that would end with a showdown among the remaining family members to become the number one criminal: the God of Gangsters.
Winner, 2014 Distinguished Contribution to Research Award presented by the Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American gang problem. Rituals and customs from Los Angeles’ eastside gangs, including hand signals, graffiti, and clothing styles, have spread to small towns and big cities alike. Many see the problem with gangs as related to urban marginality—for a Latino immigrant population struggling with poverty and social integration, gangs offer a close-knit community. Yet, as Edward Orozco Flores argues in God’s Gangs, gang members can be successfully redirected out of gangs through efforts that change the context in which they find themselves, as well as their notions of what it means to be a man. Flores here illuminates how Latino men recover from gang life through involvement in urban, faith-based organizations. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Homeboy Industries, a Jesuit-founded non-profit that is one of the largest gang intervention programs in the country, and with Victory Outreach, a Pentecostal ministry with over 600 chapters, Flores demonstrates that organizations such as these facilitate recovery from gang life by enabling gang members to reinvent themselves as family men and as members of their community. The book offers a window into the process of redefining masculinity. As Flores convincingly shows, gang members are not trapped in a cycle of poverty and marginality. With the help of urban ministries, such men construct a reformed barrio masculinity to distance themselves from gang life.
Demon warrior puppets, sword-wielding Taoist priests, spirit mediums lacerating their bodies with spikes and blades—these are among the most dramatic images in Chinese religion. Usually linked to the propitiation of plague gods and the worship of popular military deities, such ritual practices have an obvious but previously unexamined kinship with the traditional Chinese martial arts. The long and durable history of martial arts iconography and ritual in Chinese religion suggests something far deeper than mere historical coincidence. Avron Boretz argues that martial arts gestures and movements are so deeply embedded in the ritual repertoire in part because they iconify masculine qualities of violence, aggressivity, and physical prowess, the implicit core of Chinese patriliny and patriarchy. At the same time, for actors and audience alike, martial arts gestures evoke the mythos of the jianghu, a shadowy, often violent realm of vagabonds, outlaws, and masters of martial and magic arts. Through the direct bodily practice of martial arts movement and creative rendering of jianghu narratives, martial ritual practitioners are able to identify and represent themselves, however briefly and incompletely, as men of prowess, a reward otherwise denied those confined to the lower limits of this deeply patriarchal society. Based on fieldwork in China and Taiwan spanning nearly two decades, Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters offers a thorough and original account of violent ritual and ritual violence in Chinese religion and society. Close-up, sensitive portrayals and the voices of ritual actors themselves—mostly working-class men, many of them members of sworn brotherhoods and gangs—convincingly link martial ritual practice to the lives and desires of men on the margins of Chinese society. This work is a significant contribution to the study of Chinese ritual and religion, the history and sociology of Chinese underworld, the history and anthropology of the martial arts, and the anthropology of masculinity.
Using the tools of sociological theory, Robert Brenneman seeks to discover why a pot-smoking, gun-wielding "homie" gang member would want to trade in la vida loca for a Bible and the buttoned-down lifestyle of an evangelical hermano (brother in Christ) - and to what extent this strategy works for the many youth who have tried it.
Violent crime and romantic jealousy entangle a rising rap group in this urban thriller. .-Kirkus Reviews- The son of a hustler, it’s no surprise that Power has followed in his family’s footsteps and made a name for himself as one of the most respected hustlers on the streets of QueensBoro. Along with his best friend and partner Kane, the duo create a super group that sets out to take the streets and hip-hop world by storm. But soon Power finds himself in the middle of a love triangle gone-wrong with a label owner and his lead singer, Egypt, which threatens the freedom and livelihood of everyone involved.
Change your life and become an inspiring, passionate praying warrior who proclaims God's Word with this refreshingly honest guide to strengthening your faith. If you want positive results from prayer, you first need to pray! But so many people who say they believe in the power of prayer actually pray very little . . . or not at all. It's time to get serious about prayer. Autumn Miles says that we must stop being prayer wimps and instead be transformed into "prayer gangsters"--people who are passionate about their faith and loyalty to God. Autumn believes that God wants to give us so much more than what we've been settling for. It's time our prayer life, which has been mediocre at best, becomes something that is: Fervent, intentional, and highly expectant. Gangster Prayer won't teach you how to pray. Instead, it will help reveal the heart behind a believing prayer and put the focus back on who we are praying to instead of on what we are praying for. With a changed perspective and objective, we can finally see the results from prayer we've been longing for--not just answers but a changed life.
A continuation of the Gods & Gangsters series, Part Three brings heroine Egypt on a whole new job, fulling of catching cases...and bodies. On the mean streets where dog eats dog there is always one that has sharper claws and bigger teeth, and in New York her name is Egypt. Never an ordinary girl, Egypt learned the hard way that life, even when it is being kind, is a bastard. A survivor, she did what she needed to make it from day-to-day. And it turned out she was good at it. Better than good. Egypt grew into an extraordinary woman, cold, ruthless, a killer at heart, and New York witnessed her metamorphosis from that innocent child to the most feared assassin of the age. Gods & Gangsters 3 is a continuation of the series, placing Egypt in the driver's seat for a wild ride.
Relates the undercover work of George Rowe, who infiltrated the Vagos motorcycle gang, spending three years working to take down the gang from the inside.
The searing novel on which the internationally acclaimed hit film was based. “A Scarface-like urban epic . . . punctuated with lyricism and longing” (Publishers Weekly). City of God is a gritty, gorgeous tour de force from one of Brazil’s most notorious slums. Cidade de Deus: a place where the streets are awash with narcotics, where violence can erupt at any moment over drugs, money, and love—but also a place where the samba beat rocks till dawn, where the women are the most beautiful on earth, and where one young man wants to escape his background and become a photographer. When City of God erupted on screens worldwide, it became one of the most critically and commercially successful foreign films of recent years. But few were aware of the story behind the film. Written by Paulo Lins, who grew up in the favela (shantytown) Cidade de Deus in Rio de Janeiro and who spent years researching its gang history, City of God began life as a coruscating, harrowing novelistic account of twenty years in the illicit pursuits of the youth gangs born from the favela. “With plot devices sometimes as minimal as the dawning of a new day, City of God seems more like a mosaic than a novel, but it’s a mosaic with unforgettably vibrant colors.” —Booklist
