Locas: A Novel
by Yxta Maya Murray
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Book Summary Information
Author: Yxta Maya MurrayEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-04-01
ISBN: 0802135641
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of Locas: A Novel
Book Review: ESTUPIDAS INSTEAD OF LOCAS
Summary: 3 Stars
Reading this book took me back to my days of the street and living in the projects. Life was one big beating; your parents beat you, the gangs beat you and even the nuns of school beat you. I hated it all and knew there was a better world out there and I would get out to see and live it. All of my family made it out of the barrio by working hard and staying focused BUT not by taking advantage of others. It made me sick to read Lucia and her pitiful gang robbing those poor young mothers of the money they need to raise and feed their families and selves. Shame on you! Parasites! So much smarts but plain stupid. Drugs are something to stay away from, not take nor sell no matter what the profit. My brother OD'ed like so many other kids stupid and weak enough to let drugs and gangs rule their life. It is necessary that Hispanics present more positive images to the world other than drugs, gangs and violence. We will never get ahead as a class until we stop using and hurting others like us. Use your brains to get out of the slums and make a better life for your family, and yourself. We need positive role models badly. Learn to help others even if it is just one person. All four of us daughters worked and went to college at the same time; our parents DID NOT PAY A PENNY for any of us. Then we all got well-paying jobs and worked hard, striving for even better jobs all the time. Two sisters are on their second career, one was in the A.F. and retired and the other was a police officer and retired. Both still work, one in the sheriff's office as a profiler and the other is a teacher. I am very proud of my three sisters, who could easily have been prostitutes, whores, druggies, users, dropouts or on welfare. But not one of us ever had to do these things nor would we allow ourselves to do those things. We still faced violence, rape, muggings, shootings and robbery around us every day. HARD WORK and DETERMINATION are wonderful motivators.
Summary of Locas: A Novel
A plunge into Los Angeles gang life, Locas is the story of two girls under the pressure of urban warfare. "Murray perfectly captures the patois and fury of the Mexican women of the East L.A. neighborhood Echo Park." -- Publishers Weekly
This powerful, deft, and fast-moving first novel reads like a direct line to the hearts and lives of two young girls of Mexican descent living in the gang-dominated stratum of Echo Park, a tough Los Angeles neighborhood. The story is told alternately through the voices of Lucia and Celia, who through family and love are linked to the dangerous center of an emergent, fast-growing Latino gang dealing in guns and drugs. Celia watches her beloved older brother as he rises in power as gangbanger and changes in frightening ways, yet she herself struggles to find a way to live a life of goodness. Lucia, meanwhile, transgresses barriers in her own culture by forming her own female gang, the Fire Girls. Murray has a musician's ear for the language of these women, the first-generation children of immigrants coming of age in a violent place where the roles and rules of their mothers no longer obtain.
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