Review by Booklist Review
In 2019, anthropology professor Ralph (The Torture Letters, 2019) lost a family member to violence: His stepson's half brother, 19-year-old Sito, was shot to death in San Francisco's Mission District by another teenager, Julius, as an act of revenge for his own brother's death at the hands of one of Sito's friends. Ralph draws on his family's experiences and his own past research into gang-affiliated and justice-impacted youth to paint an honest, heartbreaking, and enraging picture of Sito's life and death. Sito invites readers into Sito's and Julius' world, where middle- and high-schoolers are bullied and threatened into gang membership, which in turn puts them at heightened risk for violence, criminal activity, mental health struggles, and long-term involvement with a criminal justice system that often assumes their guilt. Through Sito's story, we begin to understand the structural inequities and generational traumas that form the backdrop to so many young lives. This painful and personal book will appeal to readers who are willing to look past sensationalized headlines to understand deeper truths about gang violence in America.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Anthropologist Ralph (The Torture Letters) offers a riveting and personal account of the 2019 San Francisco murder of a distant relative, his stepson's half brother. Luis Alberto Quiñonez, who went by Sito, was killed at 19 in retaliation for the 2014 slaying of Rashawn Williams, a murder committed by Sito's acquaintance Miguel during a street fight for which Sito was also present. Sito was initially arrested for the murder, serving several months in juvenile detention before video evidence exonerated him. Ralph, who had spent much of his career studying gang violence, was spurred to investigate the circumstances surrounding Sito's death, which had a profound impact on his family though he himself had barely known Sito. He analyzes the environment that shaped Sito's youth, which he argues was characterized by a form of toxic masculinity, as well as San Francisco's justice system and the structural racism Ralph argues was evident in its handling of Sito's arrest and the trial of Sito's murderer--Rashawn's brother, Julius Williams. He identifies the justice system and street culture as two halves of a closed loop of violence that ensnares Black and brown men and boys. The work gains complexity as he juxtaposes his sympathy for the murderer with his personal connection to the story and his family's desire for justice. It's a gut-punch personal narrative with broader societal implications. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A professor of anthropology delves into the violence and terror on the streets of San Francisco, where real solutions are elusive. Ralph, the director of Princeton's Center on Transnational Policing and author of Renegade Dreams and The Torture Letters, tries to find reasons for the increasing gang-related violence in San Francisco via a thorough examination of the death of a young man called Sito, a member of a family with which the author had a connection. Sito was 19 when he was killed, and the murderer was only 17. The motive was revenge for Sito's peripheral involvement in the murder of the killer's brother some years before. In his sociological investigation, the author finds a whirlpool of unstable families, conspiracy theories, dysfunctional legal systems, and gang violence with its endless cycles of retribution. Sito was trying to get his life back on course after a spell in juvenile detention, but it was a struggle. A high proportion of the men in this part of San Francisco have been incarcerated at some point, and Ralph traces the legacy of a host of psychological problems that have led to crime. Gang culture reaches into the jails, and a period of incarceration is effectively a badge of honor, so it is hard to see how the pattern can be broken. As a minor, Sito's killer faces only a few years in juvenile detention, which hardly sounds like justice to Sito's family. During this project, Ralph was forced to reassess his belief in a variety of liberal reforms, facing "the feeling that my ideals were betraying me." In the end, he offers no concrete solutions, although he clings to hope and remains "sensitive to the reality that academic research has been--and can still be--exploitative." Through a heart-wrenching study of a youth's murder, Ralph reveals a larger picture of social decay, despair, and violence. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
