Lady Q: The Rise & Fall of a Latin Queen – by Reymundo Sanchez and Sonia Rodriguez (non-fiction/biography)
I was very interested in reading this book about a woman’s perspective on the gang life. My family affiliation was not with the Latin Kings and I myself was never in the gang, so I’ve always wondered how girls ended up actively involved and how it affected their lives.
It is important to note up front that while Sanchez gives Sonia Rodriguez (a pseudonym) equal billing as author, the book is written entirely by him, based on conversations with Rodriguez. This is important to know because it sets the stage for exactly why I ended up having problems with this book. To be fair, Sanchez was honest from the get go about his intent:
During my time as a gang member on the streets of teh Humboldt Park neighborhood in Chicago, I always wondered what made girls get involved in drugs, sex, and violence… Why did these girls choose to join a gang? I set out to locate at least one to find answers to my questions – to find one woman who was just as disgusted as I was by the loss of young lives to gang violence. (Prologue)
A few paragraphs later, describing his initial phone conversation with Rodriguez and how he sold her on telling him her story, Sanchez writes that he told her:
I’m calling because I want to write a book that tells about gang life from a female perspective. I know that your story will help save some little girls from the gang bullshit. Would you be interested in telling me your story?
And so begins the weakness of what could have been a great book. The most serious flaw of the book is that it is clear from page one that Sanchez is telling, and controlling, Rodriguez’s story. The issue isn’t that Sanchez is a bad writer. But the book would have been so much more powerful if it had been told in the first person, in Rodriguez’s voice. Sanchez did not go into the project wanting to support a fellow former gang member to tell her story. He went in with an agenda: to use his status as an author to write a book about a fellow former gang member. Naturally, the book is also molded to meet the needs of his bigger agenda: to talk young women out of joining gangs. The second agenda point is a valid and noble desire, but is to a degree hampered by the first agenda point.
To begin with, there is the way Sanchez describes and writes of Rodriguez, aka Lady Q, and her family. It didn’t take me long at all to be uncomfortable and even angry at the stereotypes played up. On the very first page, Sanchez begins by describing Lady Q’s mother:
Marta was a stereotypical Puerto Rican woman: illiterate, uneducated, and unable to survive without a man – a welfare mother who had no ambition to improve her life. (Chapter 1)
And the judgementalism and misogynistic view of women continues like that throughout the 269 page book. While Sanchez writes about horrific things done to Rodriguez as a child, there is little if any analysis of the larger oppressions that created the environment she was raised in. Where Sanchez clearly judged Marta as a “bad” mother for living with one man after another, it seemed to me that perhaps Marta was seeking a better life for her children (including a disabled older sister of Rodriguez’s). As the story goes on, it becomes clear that Marta is not a nice person or a loving mother, but I still couldn’t help but to wonder what had made her into the woman she was and I certainly recognized the cycle of abuse that she lived in and perpetuated. Unfortunately, Rodriguez eventually continued that same cycle of living with abusive men who mistreated her and her children. While that cycle was acknowledged by Sanchez, there was an underlying current of “how could she not know better and do differently?” rather than empathy for how the cycles of domestic violence are so difficult to break.
The final pages of the book left me with a negative taste in my mouth when Sanchez wrote:
Although I scolded her on several occasions about her dependency on others, she failed to understand that people, even family, have their own problems and agendas to worry about…” (Afterward)
The paternalism inherent in his description of “scolding” a grown woman was disturbing. But then he went on:
It has helped her gain opportunities to better herself, but she’s squandered them all… On more than one occasion during my work with Sonia, I became upset with her over her refusal to understand the damage she was doing to her son. I tried to get through her head… Sonia agreed and promised, and promised and agreed, but did nothing. Chances to become independent came and went one after another, and she continues to live her life in fear of being thrown out onto the streets at any moment because of her inability to pay rent.
While I applaud Sanchez for getting out of the gang and building a life away from that entire lifestyle, it seems callous for him to have no sympathy for or understanding of how difficult it is to do so. Having loved ones who have also left the gang life, I realize that it is not a single decision that makes it possible, but a lifetime of ongoing difficult, and at times painful, decisions to move forward. As a former gang member it seems odd to me that Sanchez appears to think that because he has been successful there is no reason others might not be. It also seems to me that the burdens upon a woman (children, lack of self-worth, inability to trust or form loving relationships because of past trauma, etc.) might be unique and make it harder for women.
In between the prologue and afterward is a compelling and emotionally draining story of the life of a Puerto Rican girl who was molested, raped, lived with daily beatings, was forced to drop out of school and made seemingly horrible choices in an effort to survive. It seems that Rodriguez hid nothing from Sanchez, was open and honest, and hopeful that by telling her story it would, in fact, encourage girls to stay away from gangs and continue their education and build healthy lives. While telling girls to avoid gangs, however, no real solutions were proferred for how girls in similar conditions as Rodriguez grew up in could possibly survive any other way. No suggestions were offered for how the community could help to support girls struggling through the sorts of situations that Rodriguez lived with before she ever joined up with the Latin Kings. Telling girls who are routinely abused, attending low quality schools, living in gang-infested neighborhoods, and surrounded by others who use drugs in the same room where they are doing their homework that they should value their education and not be “stupid” seems hollow.
As a young girl I used to read John Benton books about girls who ran away from home and into lives of prostitution and drugs. The point of Benton books was the “redeeming power of Jesus Christ” that these girls found when Benton’s mission group “rescued” them off the streets and brought them upstate (New York) to minister to them. And yet what I got from those books was a desire for the freedom and glamour I thought those girls had by leaving their abusive parents and striking out on their own in the big city. Even as I read about their pimps abusing them, their overdoses, and suicide attempts, I missed out on the real lessons present in telling those stories. Reading Lady Q’s story I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
If this book can encourage even one young person to stay away from gangs, drugs, and early pregnancy, that is wonderful, and I really hope that is the result of the book. I understand that was the intention, and I think it is an important duty to our youth to try. It is my opinion though that girls would have related to Lady Q’s life and story much better if she had been allowed to tell it her own way and if the telling didn’t include so much judgement from a man.
Despite what may seem like a harsh review, I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in understanding the lives of poor and marginalized girls and women of color, gang life, trauma and its effects, substance abuse, or criminal injustice. Also, despite my misgivings, I do think that this book could be very meaningful in talking with youth, especially girls/young women, about their options and the consequences of their decisions. I would recommend that it be read in a group setting and with intention of discussion of the issues presented, how girls relate to Lady Q’s story and what lessons they can take from her experience.
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You may also be interested in the review written by my friend Bianca Laureano at VivirLatino. I must be honest that I agree 100% with Bianca’s criticisms and positive notes about the book, as well as her discussion about gangs. My experience has been that while there are definitely aspects to the gang life that are immoral and dangerous, little respect is given to the positives that coexist in gangs. One positive is the oft-mentioned “family” that gang members may be lacking outside the gang and I think Lady Q’s story really exemplifies that aspect even as it claims that it isn’t reliable. Compared to her blood family, the gang really was there for her in profound and meaningful ways. But it is also important to note that many gangs, including the Latin Kings, have been actively involved in trying to help their communities thru GED classes, breakfast programs, loan networks for families in need, neighborhood clean up and beautification projects, etc. It is worth noting that many gangs did not start out with the intention of being a blight on their community, and many gangs have grown away from drug peddling and rival killing and become forces for neighborhood solidarity and safety, often acting in a “self-policing” capacity in their communities.
I fully intend to read Reymundo Sanchez’s (also a pseudonym, by the way) personal autobiographies and look forward to seeing how he treats his own story. In case you may also be interested, please look them up.
My Bloody Life: The Making of a King
Once a King, Always a King: The Unmaking of a Latin King
Book Lover's Paradise 