Comparing Boyle's Eating With Outcasts

Prior to being assigned the reading of the memoir “Always Running”, by Luis Rodriguez, I had never given much thought on juveniles involved in gang life. Rodriguez achieved success as an award-winning poet; sure the streets would no longer haunt him - until his own son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in the vivid memoir, “Always Running.” “Always Running” is the compilation of events Luis experienced during his youth in San Gabriel. The theme of the book is to always strive for the best things in life and to always take a stand for what you believe. Lured by the seemingly invincible gang culture of East L.A., he witnessed countless shootings and beatings, as well as senseless acts of street crime against his friends and family members. As a Latino in a poor neighborhood, Luis struggled through criticism, stereotypes, and mistreatment. With the help of his mentor, Chente, Luis saw a way out through education and the power of word to successfully break free from years of violence and desperation.

Situated predominantly in urban areas, gangs are becoming a major problem in today's society. The youth and adults are turning into gang members often times to leave behind the current situation they are living now. Many people who aren't familiar or affiliated with gang members are known to be curious as to why it is that the youth and adults join a gang. Some answers might be the current situation, obtaining social status, sense of protection, amongst other personal reasons. Everyone who joins a gang has different situations about why they decide to associate with gang members. In the novel, G-Dog and the Homeboys by Celeste Fremon, focuses on the gang members about East Los Angeles. This book draws the attention on the youth residing within the East Los Angeles territory and a look at the East Los Angeles gang members and how they play a major role in the book as one of the Latino gangs in East Los Angeles.

Monster by Sanyika Shakur yields a firsthand insight on gang warfare, prison, and redemption. “There are no gang experts except participants (xiii)” says Kody Scott aka. Monster. Monster vicariously explains the roots of the epidemic of South Central Los Angeles between the Crips and the Bloods that the world eventually witnessed on April 29, 1992. As readers we learn to not necessarily give gangs grace but do achieve a better understanding of their disposition to their distinct perception in life.

Labelling theory is relevant as it shows how society has branded men in gangs as deviant and the social reactions to this naming (Tierney 2013, p.148). As individuals like Asling and Blewitt are already part of a deviant subculture and habitual offenders, they strive to fulfil the deviant label. Thus, all further behaviour, activities and tasks orbits around the attempt to find social status, power and authority that they might not find in a legitimate society. This act of crime also solidifies their association with Williams, a notorious figure in Australia’s underworld. As a result, stuck in this criminal label, both men are conditioned to value success through illegitimate means to obtain a sense of identity and therefore committing crimes

The short story “Flood” by Daniel Alarcon, focuses on a town that is “flooded” with gang conflicts and the gangs are the ones who run the townspeople fate, despite what they do to escape the conflicts. In the short story a child is the narrator and although, children are portrayed as innocent; throughout “Flood” the children represent the contrary of that idea and the reader is able to recognize the “young gangster” in them. The setting of the story is significant because it is how the characters identify themselves and who they are as individuals. Whether the characters recognize themselves as gang members or innocent civilians, part of their everyday lives if overruled by the gangs, due to their ongoing conflict and disagreements over

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis describes the struggle between a patient and his tempter, Wormwood, in which the latter attempted to sway the patient’s soul away from God and towards “The Father” in hell. This description is accomplished through letters written by the uncle of Wormwood, Screwtape, who possesses considerable knowledge and experience with temptation. Throughout the book, Screwtape advises his nephew about the nature of temptation, as well as admonishing Wormwood when he makes mistakes in tempting the patient. On the other hand, the patient plays the part of the human, who, throughout the struggles of temptation, attempts to follow the path of Christianity and devotes himself to “the Enemy.” Screwtape shows clever subtlety in tempting patients to self-centeredness in prayer through feelings and images, to gluttony through delicacy, and to pride through membership in an elite Christian social circle.

In today’s society, it must have been very difficult for Boyle to continue to have faith in society with all the gang

In T.S. Boyle’s novel, The Tortilla Curtain, the suburban upper middle class culture collides on multiple occasions into that of poverty stricken illegal Mexican immigrants. These collisions of two vastly different cultures begin when Delaney, a self-proclaimed liberal humanist crashes his car into Cándido, an illegal immigrant. These collisions of foiling cultures result in a negative shift of virtues for Delaney. Boyle utilizes the negative shift in Delaney to comment on the upper middle class individuals who identify themselves with positive values who never practice those values when their own comfort and wellbeing is at risk.

In Always Running, Luis J. Rodriguez recalls his time growing up in Los Angeles during the 60s and 70s. Rodriguez writes of the hardships that his family had first encountered while trying to assimilate into American society and how he would often, while growing up, be criminalized by his teachers, law enforcement, other people, his peers, his community, and eventually people who cared most for him. Rodriguez recalls the times where he and some friends came together and created a family, a brotherhood of sort, in order to fulfill his need of belonging, but as other people in the community had also formed groups to consolidate power, thus marked the beginning of rivalry and the introduction of gangs. Rodriguez’s gang life had been filled with tragedies and filled with great times, but ultimately he tried to leave the life of crime and commit to an education. Rodriguez tried stepping away from the gang lifestyle by going to school and writing poetry, but ended up back in the life of crime after a serious altercation with the police. When Rodriguez went back to his gang lifestyle, he found the same gang that treated him as a brother, had shunned him away after Rodriguez had offered a solution to wither away the gang violence.

According to Sampson and Laub’s theory, a person’s involvement in crime during his/her life course can be explained by two important concepts. First, a trajectory represents the person’s line of development in any life aspect, including crime. Second, transitions or turning points within the life path. A transition can stop a person from engaging in crime because it puts something valuable at risk, i.e. a job. Shaggy was born and raised in a slum with terrible conditions. Even though he formed social bonds with others in his area, these bonds were not beneficial as to steer him away from crime. Crime was quite casual in the City of God .For instance, people opened their door and helped shaggy hide from the police instead of turning him in. This emphasizes that Shaggy’s social network did not stand strongly against criminal acts. Thus, inevitably lead him to grow with the ideology that crime is an acceptable way of elevating one’s status. The structure of this

By ascribing to a scapegoat the ills of the community, andthen eliminating these ills by murdering the scapegoat, thecommunity redeems itself--it saves itself from self-engenderedannihilation by reestablishing necessary hierarchical distinctionsand power relations. In this

Moreover, he reminds readers that if we continue to stand idly by and neglect helping others rather than showing mercy and understanding for others, as the author himself puts it, “We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others” (18). This ultimately brings fear and anger to a community towards the very same individuals that have sworn an oath to protect them, but instead are the cause of pain and suffering. By continuing to suffer from the absence of mercy, we are blinded by hate for those who wronged us and desperate our search for retribution in hope that it will bring us comfort. This results in the unfair convictions of many innocent and helpless individuals, as well as our remorse that will haunt us forever.

‘Dance with the devil’ is a short text composed by immortal technique. Through a sick and twisted turn of events, a young man named Billy infatuated with the street lifestyle ends up dancing with the devil. It is based around the societal issues, gang violence, and infatuation with materialistic things, greed, and our inability to put money last to grow mentally and emotionally. The theme of ‘overcoming challenges’ is first presented in this short text when immortal technique says “a corrupted young mind, at the age of thirteen n*gga never had a father and his mom was a fiend, she put the pipe down, but for every year she was sober her son’s heart simultaneously grew colder”. Due to Billy’s upbringing we can instantly assume that because he did not have a

Murder would’ve been kinder. He is a ghost among the living, even more so than he was before. At least back then he could show his face in the ghetto and be greeted warmly, by people like him. That was a place where his pariah-like status granted him a family. But his forced conversion has also converted these kindred spirits; now he means no more to them than the spiteful glances they send his way. He is not welcome with the Christians either, though he would rather be tortured to insanity than to find any sort of intimacy with them. Every Sunday he feels the heat of the congregation’s stares as he steps into his personal circle of hell. So, ostracized by both, he toes the line as a spectre.

The work that had the most impact on me was that of Father Greg Boyle’s. Father Boyle wrote many good things, but the thing I took away from him was “we belong to each other”(Boyle unit 1). I had to think about this statement at first. When I think of myself and who I belong to I immediately think family and friends. I do not think of myself as belonging to other humans, especially ones I don’t even know, however, Father Boyle made me rethink myself. He allowed me to view myself differently. I now view myself as a human being who instead of just belonging to those I know, I belong to those I don’t. Another one of his main points is that human’s need to be in community with others and be in kinship. This point in a way shocked me. Our world today is very divided. People often identify with certain groups: Republicans, Democrats, White, Black, American, Greek, and many many more. I myself identify with many groups, however Greg Boyle taught me that really there is only one group that we should all identify with, Human.