Dead End Kids: Gang Girls and the Boys They Know

Abstract

Girls are no less important to gang life than boys. Young women get trapped in cycles of victimization and self-defeating behaviour despite their tough talk to the contrary. This book aims to expose gang life as seen through the eyes of a teen-aged girl named Cara. It provides an account of Cara's life as a member of a Kansas city gang, the Fremont Hustlers. Drugs and guns, shootings and assaults, boyfriends and pregnancies, ratty apartments, broken-down cars, minimum wage jobs, strained relationships with family and peers, dodging the police and praying for peace fill her days. The book describes in detail the social and economic pressure on Cara and fellow gang members whose lives were shaped by poverty, family disorganization and parental neglect.

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