Product Description

A rhythmic, terrifying plunge into East L.A. gang life, "Locas" is the story of two teenage girls whose gun trade is about to explode into the big business of drugs. "A stunning debut novel".--"Ms".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #210693 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780802135643
• BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Amazon.com Review
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.

From Publishers Weekly
Rather than simmer beneath the surface, anger boils over on the pages of this first novel. Murray perfectly captures the patois and fury of the Mexican women of the East L.A. neighborhood of Echo Park. Here, the gang hierarchy is set in stone. There are jefes, right hands, taggers, third raters and sheep, the last being the girls who shut up, pose prettily at rumblas and carry babies for the men. Narrators Lucia and Cecelia, however, do not fit this role: Lucia wants to be a grandola; Cecelia sees herself as ugly, a "dirt dark Indian" who can't hold on to a pregnancy or a girlfriend. At the outset, the gun-dealing Lobos gang prevails, led by Manny, who is Cecelia's brother and Lucia's lover. As cocaine supersedes guns and upstart rival G-4s challenge the Lobos, the two women struggle, exhibiting a depth of character that sets them apart from other women in Echo Park. In portraying Lucia's unrelenting criminal meanness and hunger for power and Cecelia's ultimate resignation to a life of praying and cleaning rich rubias' houses, Murray gives readers inner-city gang life from the eyes of women. Both narrators' voices are insistent, unvarnished, in-your-face tough. The reader equipped with a Spanish-English dictionary has the best chance to grasp all the nuances of this convincing, under-the-skin work. (May) FYI: Murray is an associate professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. A chapter of this book appeared in Buzz.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The ways in which two similar lives parallel and diverge is the subject of this gritty tale of Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles. Cecilia and Lucia may be united by their love for Manny, Cecilia's brother and leader of the Lobos gang. Yet each takes a different path toward success in a cultural landscape that offers few choices for women. For Cecilia, it means getting pregnant at a tender age in the hope of gaining some small sense of belonging from the mamacitas in the park. For Lucia, it's attempting to become something forbidden for a woman?a gang leader in her own right. While the social and economic realities of the urban poor play a major role here, Murray never sacrifices character development to blind determinism. A gripping, if grim, work; for public libraries.
-?Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Realistic portrayal of life in a barrio.
This book told a wonderful story of what it's really like for girls who live in the barrio and how they face problems. It realistically shows what two different girls choose to do and where they end up. This book gives you a palette of emotions changing throughout the story. It also gives you a lot to think about at the end. "Locas" changed my life by giving me a rude awakening of where I might end up if I continued with my gang activity.

Locas can chang your views on life in gang.
Locas takes you on a wild ride through the cold heart of Lucia and the confused, yet caring heart of Cecilia. It is one of the best books I have ever read dealing with your environment's effect on you. in any other situations or in any other area of the US you would not be able to feel power and pain along with our heroines. The trip through Echo Park is a long one, and it leaves no stone in anyone's life unturned. Too many lives are interwoven, and too many people know who you are in Echo Park. The small community of Echo Park is made to be the center of the universe for these locas, and the book should be in your mind. The drama of the lives of Lucia and Cecilia are set to make you worry and care about the two girls through their turbulent life in the 'hood. I would recommend this book to anyone, either as a reality check or a way to spend quality time.

ESTUPIDAS INSTEAD OF LOCAS
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.