Synopses & Reviews
For the past five years, journalist Sarah Garland has followed the lives of current and former gang members living in Hempstead on the border of Garden City, Long Island. Affiliated with Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street, their troubling personal stories expose the cruel realities of segregation, racial income gaps, and poverty that lie hidden behind suburban white picket fences.
As Garland travels from Los Angeles to El Salvador and back to the East Coast, she reveals a disturbing cycle of poverty in which families, fleeing from troubled Central American cities, move into Americas suburban backyards, only to find the pattern of violence repeating itself. Brilliantly reported and sensitively told, Gangs in Garden City draws back the veil on a hidden, troubling world.
Synopsis
Gangs in Garden City examines how two gangsMara Salvatrucha and 18th Streethave ventured beyond our urban centers and into Americas most exclusive suburbs. Journalist Sarah Garland takes us into the lives of the residents of Hempstead, Long Islandonce a mixture of quaint homes and shops, its streets now resemble those of an inner-city ghetto where the rivalry between the gangs has left a trail of bodies. Unrelenting and original in scope, this powerful book shows how immigration raids, incarceration policies, suburban decay, and inadequate funding of our nations schools have aggravated an already deteriorating situation.
Synopsis
A groundbreaking work of investigative journalism that explores the startling growth of Central American gangs in the suburbs of America
About the Author
Sarah Garland has reported on crime and immigration for the New York Times, Marie Claire, New York Magazine, and more. She is a 2009 recipient of the Spencer Fellowship in Education Reporting from Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.