Reymundo Sanchez

I am normally skeptical of the "memoirs" of gang members. However, Sanchez admits in several places to a lack of knowledge and to being scared of what might happen to him. While I am sure there is some embellishing of the truth, I think there is less than in most similar items.

This book showed me a world I have never ever been a part of. It almost seemed like a horrid fantasy land, like Edgar Allen Poe's vision of Oz, but it is not. It is a real place in the United States. It is a city known as Chicago.

Gangs are dangerous in multiple ways and that is the main message of the book. It takes you on a journey from Reymundo's childhood all the way through his teenage years. The book is captivating, in depth, vivid, and shocking. It is difficult to put down due to the show more fast pace spiral Reymundo goes down - his own personal rabbit hole. He just keeps falling deeper and deeper going through the levels of gang involvement, decrease time in school, and his increased use of drugs and violence for different purposes and reasons.

Overall, this is an amazing book. The only other book that has exposed me to a world I have never known before and found this captivating was The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

I am looking forward to reading the squeal to this book, Once A King, Always A King. show less

Reymundo Sanchez (pseudonym), tells what he experienced growing up as a Latin King during the 1980s. This story is full of murder, blood, violence, sexual assault, and drugs. I would not recommend anyone younger than the age of 16 to read this book. However, the story is well written and perfectly illustrates how the author turned to street gangs and what he experienced as a "King." He doesn't hold anything back when telling his story, which makes for a great but difficult read.

Although show more this book is very graphic, many teens and young adults watch movies or play video games that depict the same material. Many students at my old high school had trouble putting this book down and I know it's very popular with young adults. This is the kind of book that you give to a teenager that's thinking about joining a gang or is heavily involved in the delinquent life. show less

Not nearly as good or as engaging as My Bloody Life, Once a King, Always a King, tells the story of Reymundo Sanchez after he is "violated out" of the Latin Kings.

The first part of the book comes across as nothing more than Sanchez's braggadocio vis a vis how many women he can screw, often in more-erotic-than necessary-detail. It's hard to feel like he regrets it when he describes it with such relish.

The book picks up when Rey lands in prison on drug charges, giving sparse but interesting show more information about what jail life is for gang members. Not to mention demonstrating how prison is a breeding ground for gangs.

However, the book soon hits a lull in again in describing Sanchez's relationship with a college graduate in excruciating detail. His attempt to build a new life with her is interesting, to be sure, but their overall relationship? Not so much. Nor are his endless struggles to come to terms with his feelings for his mother.

While the language and sentence structure in this book is just as juvenile as it is in the first book, for some reason it grates more here. Perhaps it's because the concepts being described in My Bloody Life matched the linguistic skills, while Sanchez is struggling for higher expression here.

Not a waste of time if you read and enjoyed the first book -- after all, you are probably as curious as I was to see how it all turns out -- but not a stellar read. show less