Study Nicky Cruz 's Life Very Interesting And Inspiring

August 2013, My uncle Juther Alfredo Perez was brutally murdered. He was 28 years old. He had two kids, a girlfriend and always cared for his family and friends. He was 6’8 with a lot of mouth. He started a gang in The Bronx, the Young Gunnas or Yg’z. Yes, his gang sold drugs and yes, his gang killed people. Around 2012, he started rapping and making music videos and attracted plenty of attention.

He was often punished when his brothers weren 't, even if they were doing the same thing. He was able to be adventurous but instead was stuck with guilt. Throughout his years he also faced the emotional toll of abuse in many ways. One way his mother did this was by no longer calling him by his name, and not referring to him as a human. Dave states in his book, “that death would be better than my prospects for any kind of happiness. I was nothing but an “it”.” Children and adolescents go through a stage where they are trying to figure out who they are. With an abusive mother who takes away your identity it would be really hard to figure out who you are and you would be confused on what roles to play. Erikson’s stages emphasize family and culture. Erikson noted that psychological conflicts, especially in childhood within families, affect people lifelong.

Celia Cruz was one of the most famous Cuban salsa singers. She was nicknamed the Queen of Salsa, with more than thirty-six albums, recorded with some other leading singers in Latin music. Celia worked as a singer for more than forty years, and during that time, she became well known for her vigorous work, great personality, and her emotional way of singing. During her performances, she was well known for being able to improvise lyrics. She was an artist with over six decades of success making her an inspiration to the Latin community as well as the rest of the world.

Luis was growing up into the life of gang banging, gaining a reputation in San Gabriel by being scouted into bigger gangs in the area. Increasing his involvement in the gang by stealing form stores, to eventually being part of premeditated arson and murders. Luis was well on his way to a life in prison or worse, death. By growing up during a time of racial discrimination, options were limited to becoming a factory worker or gangster. Luis met

As a child, he never felt like he belonged anywhere. He was abandoned by his mother and father as a child. His father left when he was only a few months old. His mother left him when he was ten-years-old. She remarried and decided not to take him with her. He moved in with his grandparents. His grandmother's name was Benne Gutierrez. She

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.

Through the narrative “The Scholarship Boy” I find few turning points that I notice a shift in the demeanor of Richard Rodriguez as well as how I perceive the story. First of all, it is made apparent to me that people acknowledge him for his successes by making remarks such as, “Your parents must be proud” or “How did you manage it? According to the opening paragraphs Rodriguez is seen as a model student. Although this may be true, the first turning point I find suggests otherwise as Rodriguez conveys, “For although I was a very good student, I was also a very bad student…Always successful, always unconfident. Exhilarated by my process. Sad.” This quote changed my perspective of Rodriguez because of the negative emotion he expresses toward his family. By the same token, I recall my sister being an outstanding achiever throughout school, yet, she was similarly depressed as well as annoyed towards me and the rest of our family. This flashback assisted me in relating to Rodriguez’s emotions towards his successes. In the same fashion, I am supplied a grasp of his shift in tone and direction in the narrative.

Rodriguez also shows us that he has gained the “sociological imagination” by writing about his appreciation and understanding

Eventually Richard Rodriguez develops bitterness towards his parents. For being uneducated and ignorant, His thirst for knowledge has transformed him into someone who holds a distain for those without knowledge or esteem. Then he transforms into someone who feels guilt over his success. His family life has turned into an atypical situation where there is very little closeness between him and the other members of his family. This is caused by his increasing want to distance himself from what he believes to be uneducated.

Richard believes that he was made to be the person he became because of his parents as both continuously beat him his entire childhood. Many neighbourhood children abused and harmed him as well, for many reasons such as being Polish, scrawny and weak. Neither parent ever helped Richard either mentally of physically throughout the time he was bullied. “Richard often wondered why his mother and father didn’t like him, what he had done to deserve their indifference and violence” (p.22). Richard’s mother, Anna would not only verbally assault him, but would also routinely abuse him beginning at a young age, with household items such as broomsticks. She thought of this as stern discipline, which was supposedly required when brought up in a religious upbringing. Richard’s father, Stanley, abused his wife, as well as all three of his sons; one of which died from one of the

Paul Bernardo was a well liked child by all the parents in the neighbourhood, he was pleasant and friendly.  Although, when he was a sixteen, he got into an argument with his mother and she told him about how he was a illegitimate child and showed him the picture of his real father for whom she had an affair with.  Paul was devastated and after the incident he did not get along with his mother.  He started to hang around a tough crowd of people, had a terrible temper and enjoyed humiliating women publicly. This later led to his abusiveness towards women.

When reading this autobiography it reminded me of my adolescent years; I remember feeling like I knew all there was to being a grown up, I also felt like my parents didn’t know much because they didn’t go to college. I strongly feel like they could have always done more than they were doing. Upon reading this, I felt as though I was reading Richard Rodriguez’s journal and he was a very unhappy kid living in the ghetto. He was also embarrassed of his own life and he seemed unhappy in his own skin... “(Ways of reading pg.339) A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn’t forget that success was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student”.

“Charles Manson was an illegitimate, unplanned child, born to a 16-year-old mother. His mother was irresponsible, into drugs and criminal activity, and unable to care for a child. She reportedly sold him when he was a young child for a pitcher of beer” (Henderson). Sounds like an amazing childhood, right. Wrong. Charles Manson was bounced around from house to house, and because of that, his childhood was not that great. Because of his nerve wrecking childhood, Manson was bound to be a criminal. As the years went by and time took its course, Manson decided that he wanted to take a new turn in life and become a star.

Ricardo Leyva Munoz Ramirez was an infamous serial killer that went by two major alias one being “Richard Ramirez” and the other being “The Night Stalker”. This man was the person responsible for beating, raping, and killing many people in the Los Angeles area during the mid-1980’s to the late 1980’s. He was the reason for many of the people’s suffering and pain that were either close friend’s to the victims, or actual family members. This sinister man was not simply born this way, he had been influenced by many things starting from his childhood. He was influenced by two major things in his life, he was influenced by his cousin and by something that people are influenced by worldwide, drugs. Richard Ramirez led a very interesting life that

In this research project i decided to study Nicky Cruz because I find his life very interesting. I chose to find out what his early life was like, how God used him and what i can learn from him.