East Side Stories: Gang Life in East LA

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Several gang related photos from the early 1990s from various neighborhoods in Los Angeles, including Watts, East LA, Boyle Heights, South LA, and Carson. The gangs feature in the book include Evergreen, Varrio Nueva Estrada, Marianna Maravilla, Watts Varrio Grape, Be Bopp Watts Bloods and Florencia 13.

Very powerful and reflective photos that make you think and question how some many youth are caught up in the cycle of violence. Riveting photos include a 2 year old baby in the coffin, a 5 year old boy that shows his stomach scar from being shot from a stray bullet and Gyro from Evergreen who was killed and featured in the book.

Read review below.

Rodriguez, a freelance photographer whose work has appeared in Life, among other publications, traveled to Los Angeles in 1992 to try to understand?and convey to the public?the complexities behind the screaming headlines of gangland killings. His photographs of life in East-Side barrios as well as South Central neighborhoods often feature the expected guns and small groups of young men posing for the camera. But just as often the reader sees fathers with their children and other family groups, illuminating the innumerable lives that surround the gang experience. Excerpts from Rodriguez's journal bring the people to life, and Martinez's fluid, anecdotal essay on the trials of average people's lives in recent years in especially clear and moving. Only the photographer's interview with Luis Rodriguez (Always Running: La Vida Loca, Curbstone, 1993) disappoints with its impersonal rambling. A fine addition to the growing literature on gang life that belongs in photojournalism as well as subject collections; for larger public libraries.?

Eric Bryant, From Library Journal

Paperback: 187 pages
Publisher: powerHouse Books, 1998/2000
Language: English
Price: $23.95