Sonia rodriguez latin queen

Offering a rarely seen female perspective on gang life, this raw and powerful memoir tells not only of one woman's struggle to survive the streets but also of her ascent to the top ranks of the new mafia, where the only people more dangerous than.
Sonia Rodriguez was born in 1967 in Puerto Rico in the middle of everything-the middle child of three girls, in the middle of an abusive home, and in the middle.
Offering a rarely seen female perspective on gang life, this raw and powerful memoir tells not only of one woman's struggle to survive the streets but also.

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LADY Q

The life of a Puerto Rican gangbanger on the cold Chicago streets, dully presented.

Having exhausted his own criminal exploits, Sanchez (Once a King, Always a King: The Unmaking of a Latin King, 2003, etc.) turns to female wrongdoing, as practiced and experienced by “Lady Q.” That was his co-author’s nickname when she was a ruthless member of the Latin Queens, female counterparts of Sanchez and his fellows in the Latin Kings. Growing up in Humboldt Park, Chicago’s gang-ridden Puerto Rican neighborhood, Sonia Rodriguez was alternately ignored and beaten by her near-psychotic mother, whose deadbeat boyfriends often degraded and sexually abused the girl. It’s no shock that Sonia took fast to teen rebellion and gangbanging. By the mid-1980s, she’d joined the Latin Queens and was taking part in drive-by shootings. After she broke the gang’s code by bragging about her affiliations on Oprah Winfrey’s local talk show while her real name and nickname were flashed on-screen, her mother sent her to relatives in rural Pennsylvania. She fell for a cousin, got pregnant and got hersel

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Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen

March 16, 2008

This book was written to tell the story of a female gang member's life, not pull off amazing literary feats. The writing is simplistic, but the story is powerful.

A common sentence in the book was something like, "Lady Q had finally had enough of the dangers of gang life/selling drugs/living with abusive family member, and was ready to make some positive changes. She got a job and found a new apartment with [family member that used to abuse her but she has made up with]." It never lasts, and over and over she loses her jobs, fights with whoever she has grown to trust, returns to gang relationships, the drug trade, abusive family members, and everything she repeatedly tries to escape. Perhaps the most depressing thing was that, throughout the entire book, she never has a lasting, positive relationship with anyone. Every friend or relative she ever trusts, or is ever close to, fucks her over, often repeatedly, and she does her own share of fucking them over. The only person she never experiences some form of betrayal with,

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Publisher Description

Offering a rarely seen female perspective on gang life, this raw and powerful memoir tells not only of one woman's struggle to survive the streets but also of her ascent to the top ranks of the new mafia, where the only people more dangerous than rival gangs were members of her own.

At age five Sonia Rodriguez's stepfather began to abuse her; at ten she was molested by her uncle and beaten by her mother when she told on him; and by thirteen her home had become a hangout for the Latin Kings and Queens who were friends with her older sister. Threatened by rival gang members at school, Sonia turned away from her education and extracurricular activities in favor of a world of drugs and violence.

The Latin Kings, one of the largest and most notorious street gangs in America, became her refuge, but its violence cost her friends, freedom, self-respect, and nearly her life. As a Latin Queen, she experienced the exhilarating highs and unbelievable lows of gang life. From being shot at by her own gang and kicked out at age eighteen with an infant daughter