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Tiny Revolutions in Russia: Twentieth Century Soviet and Russian History in Anecdotes and Jokes (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe #Vol. 3)
by Bruce AdamsThis book presents a large collection of anecdotes and jokes from different periods of the 20th century. Anecdotes and jokes were a hidden form of discursive communication in the Soviet era, lampooning official practices and acting as a confidential form of self-affirmation. They were not necessarily anti-Soviet, by their very nature both criticising existing reality and acting as a form of acquiescence. Above all they provide invaluable insights into everyday life, and the attitudes and concerns of ordinary people. The book also includes anecdotes and jokes from the post-Soviet period, when ordinary people in Russia continued to have to cope with rather grim reality, and the compiler provides extensive introductory and explanatory matter to set the material in context.
Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement
by Jennifer L. HollandTiny You tells the story of one of the most successful political movements of the twentieth century: the grassroots campaign against legalized abortion. While Americans have rapidly changed their minds about sex education, pornography, arts funding, gay teachers, and ultimately gay marriage, opposition to legalized abortion has only grown. As other socially conservative movements have lost young activists, the pro-life movement has successfully recruited more young people to its cause. Jennifer L. Holland explores why abortion dominates conservative politics like no other cultural issue. Looking at anti-abortion movements in four western states since the 1960s—turning to the fetal pins passed around church services, the graphic images exchanged between friends, and the fetus dolls given to children in school—she argues that activists made fetal life feel personal to many Americans. Pro-life activists persuaded people to see themselves in the pins, images, and dolls they held in their hands and made the fight against abortion the primary bread-and-butter issue for social conservatives. Holland ultimately demonstrates that the success of the pro-life movement lies in the borrowed logic and emotional power of leftist activism.
The Tio Kingdom of The Middle Congo: 1880-1892 (International African Institute Ser.)
by Jan VansinaOriginally published in 1973, this book reconstructs the political and economic organization and the social life of the Tio kingdom at the end of the 19th century by means of a critical synthesis of documentary and ethnographic data. Based on a detailed study of rich docuemntary sources and fieldwork, it analyses the persistent features of Tio social organization and political relations as well as the extensive economic changes associated with the development and later decline of caravan trading at Stanley Pool. It is fully illustrated with maps, tables and diagrams. This book shows the importance for both anthropoligical theory and historical interpreation of obtaining comprehensive data on the state of a particular society at a given time.
Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt
by Orisanmi BurtonA radical reinterpretation of "Attica," the revolutionary 1970s uprising that galvanized abolitionist movements and transformed prisons. Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. With this book, Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls. Burton goes beyond the state records that other histories have relied on for the story of Attica and expands that archive, drawing on oral history and applying Black radical theory in ways that center the intellectual and political goals of the incarcerated people who led the struggle. Packed with little-known insights from the prison movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army, Tip of the Spear promises to transform our understanding of prisons—not only as sites of race war and class war, of counterinsurgency and genocide, but also as sources of defiant Black life, revolutionary consciousness, and abolitionist possibility.
Tippecanoe and Tyler Too: Famous Slogans and Catchphrases in American History
by Jan R. Van MeterIn individual entries on slogans and catchphrases from the early seventeenth to the late twentieth century, Jan Van Meter reveals that each one is a living, malleable entity that has profoundly shaped and continues to influence our public culture. From John Winthrop's "We shall be as a city upon a hill" to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" and Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall", each of Van Meter's selections emerges as a memory device for a larger political or cultural story. Taken together in Van Meter's able hands, these famous slogans and catchphrases give voice to our common history even as we argue about where it should lead us.
Tippecanoe County and the 1913 Flood (Disaster)
by Pete Bill Arnold L. SweetHeralding the coming spring, the weather forecast promised a warm and sunny Easter in 1913. Little did the citizens of Tippecanoe County realize that a furious deluge would cause the Wabash River to swell to an ungovernable and lethal height. Bridges collapsed, whole buildings came unmoored from their foundations and washed away and heroic rescue attempts saved lives and cost others. Using previously untold stories and images never before seen in print, Pete Bill and Arnold Sweet unfold the human drama of communities suddenly cut off from the rest of the world and facing a natural disaster that gripped twenty states.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell'A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person thinks about the world around him' Michael LewisIn this brilliant and original book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analyses the 'tipping point', that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.'Hip and hopeful, THE TIPPING POINT is like the idea it describes: concise, elegant but packed with social power. A book for anyone who cares about how society works and how we can make it better' George Stephanopoulos
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell'A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person thinks about the world around him' Michael LewisIn this brilliant and original book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analyses the 'tipping point', that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.'Hip and hopeful, THE TIPPING POINT is like the idea it describes: concise, elegant but packed with social power. A book for anyone who cares about how society works and how we can make it better' George Stephanopoulos
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell'A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person thinks about the world around him' Michael LewisIn this brilliant and original book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analyses the 'tipping point', that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world, Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.'Hip and hopeful, THE TIPPING POINT is like the idea it describes: concise, elegant but packed with social power. A book for anyone who cares about how society works and how we can make it better' George Stephanopoulos
Tirana Modern: Biblio-Ethnography on the Margins of Europe
by Matthew RosenGuided by the thesis that literature can transform social reality, Tirana Modern draws on ethnographic and historical material to examine the public culture of reading in modern Albania. As its starting point, this book asks: How has Albanian literature and literary translation shaped social action during the longue durée of Albanian modernity?Drawing on material collected through fieldwork with a community of readers, writers, and translators attached to the independent Albanian publisher Pika pa sipërfaqe (Point without Surface), Tirana Modern provides a tightly focused ethnography of literary culture in Albania that brings into relief the more general dialectic between social imagination and social reality as mediated by reading and literature.
Tirano Ou Cidadão
by Guido Galeano Vega Jéssica DondoniEscrevo este livro com muita humildade em meu coração, sou uma pessoa adulta, com todas experiências do meu meio século de vida, tenho passado tantas coisas, desde minha infância, em um país arrasado por guerras, uma nação que desde sua origem tem experimentado o abuso de exploradores, de agressores, de oportunistas e violadores, que tem suportado a tirania de um dos piores ditadores da América Latina, tem sofrido discriminação e humilhação por parte dos países vizinhos, que o mutilaram. Nações cujos cidadãos, silenciosamente, tem sofrido a tortura de serem governados por mentirosos, oportunistas, ladrões, cínicos, gente sem escrúpulo, sem sensibilidade e essencialmente sem respeito aos direitos de seus semelhantes. Como uma pessoa que tem se adaptado às mudanças globais da tecnologia promissora de comunicação e a usou para adquirir conhecimentos gerais sobre as sociedades modernas e suas histórias. Este livro é a contribuição de um cidadão comum, sem influências políticas ou sociais, em um país onde, em tais círculos, o dinheiro está em primeiro e depois os valores e direitos humanos. Sem pretender, de maneira alguma, que este livro seja considerado de caráter político ou ideológico, apenas com a intenção de compartilhar um profundo sentimento de preocupação com o destino final da humanidade.
Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism
by Catherine Waldby Robert MitchellAs new medical technologies are developed, more and more human tissues--such as skin, bones, heart valves, embryos, and stem cell lines--are stored and distributed for therapeutic and research purposes. The accelerating circulation of human tissue fragments raises profound social and ethical concerns related to who donates or sells bodily tissue, who receives it, and who profits--or does not--from the transaction. Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell survey the rapidly expanding economies of exchange in human tissue, explaining the complex questions raised and suggesting likely developments. Comparing contemporary tissue economies in the United Kingdom and United States, they explore and complicate the distinction that has dominated practice and policy for several decades: the distinction between tissue as a gift to be exchanged in a transaction separate from the commercial market and tissue as a commodity to be traded for profit. Waldby and Mitchell pull together a prodigious amount of research--involving policy reports and scientific papers, operating manuals, legal decisions, interviews, journalism, and Congressional testimony--to offer a series of case studies based on particular forms of tissue exchange. They examine the effect of threats of contamination--from HIV and other pathogens--on blood banks' understandings of the gift/commodity relationship; the growth of autologous economies, in which individuals bank their tissues for their own use; the creation of the United Kingdom's Stem Cell bank, which facilitates the donation of embryos for stem cell development; and the legal and financial repercussions of designating some tissues "hospital waste. " They also consider the impact of different models of biotechnology patents on tissue economies and the relationship between experimental therapies to regenerate damaged or degenerated tissues and calls for a legal, for-profit market in organs. Ultimately, Waldby and Mitchell conclude that scientific technologies, the globalization of tissue exchange, and recent anthropological, sociological, and legal thinking have blurred any strict line separating donations from the incursion of market values into tissue economies.
Tit-For-Tat Media: The Contentious Bodies and Sex Imagery of Political Activism
by Katrien JacobsThis book examines the visual-sexual turn in social media discourses in the field of online activism with a particular focus on the extraordinary protest years of 2018–2020. Presenting a socially engaged theory of "tit-for-tat media" and including case-studies on activist movements such as the Euro-American alt-right, the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and revolutionary artists in China, this study reveals how visual cultures, including gendered or sexualized imagery, are utilized to influence public perception. By presenting in-depth explorations of online ethnography, interviews with activists and studies of the political histories and urban protests-environments, the volume uncovers how local artists, netizens and citizens are using media and digital imagery in contemporary activism. Covering a broad spectrum of social media content, from hyper-cute manga and cartoons to satirical pornography and sexualized hate-speech, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, political communication, sexuality and gender studies.
Titanic: 'Iceberg Ahead'
by James W. BancroftUsing a unique approach, the author explores the disaster through the lives of fifty people linked to the sinking, from all walks of life and geographical regions.To have sailed on ‘the voyage of the century’ aboard White Star Line’s RMS Titanic – described at the time as ‘a floating palace’ – was like being one of the first passengers to fly on Concorde. On 10 April 1912, people from all walks of life began embarking on Titanic, then the largest ship afloat, for what was to be the trip of a lifetime on the ship’s maiden voyage across the north Atlantic. Many were looking forward to starting new lives in the United States. However, just before midnight on Sunday, 14 April 1912, Titanic’s crew began to send out distress signals stating, ‘We have struck an iceberg.' The liner had been steaming at speed when it collided with an enormous iceberg which stripped off her bilge under the waterline for more than 100 yards, opened up five of the front compartments and flooded the coal bunker servicing one of the boilers. The damage was fatal, and some three hours after the disaster began to unfold the last visible part of Titanic slipped beneath the waves. There were only sixteen lifeboats and four collapsible dinghies – which was completely insufficient for the number of passengers making the crossing. As a consequence, more than 1,500 passengers and crew died: two out of every three people onboard perished. Much has been written about the Titanic disaster, and it has been the subject matter for several films. The author is well-known for his depth of research and his attention to detail, and in a new style of format, he has selected fifty people involved in the disaster, and by using their specific eyewitness accounts he has managed to make the confusing situation much clearer, making it possible for the reader to experience the dreadful events as they unfolded. The book also includes biographical tributes to the fifty people, who came from all walks of life and geographical regions, telling who they were, their experiences during the disaster, and what happened to those who were fortunate enough to survive.
The Titanic and the City of Widows It Left Behind: The Forgotten Victims of the Fatal Voyage
by Julie Cook“Harrowing and emotional . . . A tribute to the enduring power of family. The story of the disaster’s widows uplifts and devastates in equal measure.” —Gareth Russell, author of The Ship of DreamsWhen the Titanic foundered in April 1912, the world’s focus was on the tragedy of the passengers who lost their lives. Ever since, in films, dramatizations, adaptations and books, the focus has mostly continued to be on the ones who died.The Titanic and the City of Widows It Left Behind focuses on another group of people—the widows and children of the crew who perished on board.Author Julie Cook’s great-grandfather was a stoker who died on the Titanic. Her great-grandmother had to raise five children with no breadwinner.This book focuses on Emily and the widows like her who had to fight for survival through great hardship, while still grieving for the men they loved who’d died on the ship. Using original archive sources and with accounts from descendants of crew who also lost their lives, the book asks how these women survived through abject poverty and grief—and why their voices have been silent for so long.“The sinking of the Titanic has produced a wealth of books, articles, films and TV documentaries, all of which have given very little thought to the dependents and friends of those who lost their lives in this ocean tragedy. A moving and involving story that corrects this neglect, told by a descendant of a Titanic widow . . . How most of them survived the grief and grinding hardship is a story worth the telling, as are the stories of those who did not survive the crushing pressures.” —Firetrench
The Titanic Disaster: Omens, Mysteries & Misfortunes of the Doomed Liner
by James W. BancroftIt was on Wednesday, 10 April 1912, that the imposing bulk of the RMS Titanic slipped her berth, and, to great fanfare, headed out into the Solent at the start of her maiden voyage. By all accounts, the liner was at the time the largest man-made object ever to move on water. The space her decks created allowed her designers to introduce previously unseen levels of luxury. In first class, for example, there were many new features such as squash courts, a Turkish bath, a gymnasium, a barber shop and even the first swimming pool built on board a ship. There was also the bold claim by its builders that Titanic was ‘practically unsinkable’. Sadly, just four days later, this assertion was found wanting. At 23.40 hours on the evening of 14 April, Titanic struck an iceberg. In less than three hours she had slipped beneath the waves. While the liner’s loss has been the subject of numerous films, documentaries and publications in the years that followed, in this book the author James W. Bancroft asks if the RMS Titanic had been doomed to a watery grave even before it sailed? Certainly, many people experienced feelings of foreboding about the ship, and there were many strange omens and unexplained events surrounding its construction and maiden voyage. A novel written many years before Titanic was built mirrored almost exactly the details of the disaster, and the well-known spiritualist, W.T. Stead, wrote a story of a similar nature. As a passenger on the ship, he seemed to have accepted his fate and did not try to save himself. Even animals seem to have sensed danger, such as the dog which tried to stop its owner from traveling to board the vessel, and Titanic’s cat had kittens and was seen taking them all off the liner before it sailed. The voyage was fatefully delayed for three weeks, and at least fifty travelers had forebodings about the ‘Ghost Ship’, some of whom missed the sailing or refused to board. Following years of research, James has uncovered some 100 fascinating stories concerning omens and premonitions of people who sailed – or in fact decided not to – on the ill-fated liner. This is the first time that all of these incidents have been brought together. Together they provide an unusual insight into the Titanic disaster.
Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education (Critical Moments in American History)
by Elizabeth Kaufer Busch William E. ThroThis book examines the history and evolution of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funding. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and William Thro illuminate the ways in which the interpretation and implementation of Title IX have been transformed over time to extend far beyond the law's relatively narrow statutory text. The analysis considers the impact of Title IX on athletics, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and, for a time, transgender discrimination. Combining legal and cultural perspectives and supported by primary documents, Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education offers a balanced and insightful narrative of interest to anyone studying the history of sex discrimination, educational policy, and the law in the contemporary United States.
The Title of Totonicapán
by Stephen HoustonThis work is the first English translation of the complete text of the Title of Totonicapán, one of the most important documents composed by the K’iche’ Maya in the highlands of Guatemala, second only to the Popol Vuh. The original document was completed in 1554, only a few decades after the Spanish Conquest of the K’iche’ people in 1524. This volume contains a wholly new translation from the original K’iche’ Maya text, based on the oldest known manuscript copy, rediscovered by Robert Carmack in 1973. The Title of Totonicapán is a land title written by surviving members of the K’iche’ Maya nobility, a branch of the Maya that dominated the highlands of western Guatemala prior to the Spanish invasion in 1524, and it was duly signed by the ruling lords of all three major K’iche’ lineages—the Kaweqib’, the Nijayib’, and the Ajaw K’iche’s. Titles of this kind were relatively common for Maya communities in the Guatemalan highlands in the first century after the Spanish Conquest as a means of asserting land rights and privileges for its leaders. Like the Popol Vuh, the Title of Totonicapán is written in the elevated court language of the early Colonial period and eloquently describes the mythic origins and history of the K’iche’ people. For the most part, the Title of Totonicapán agrees with the Popol Vuh’s version of K’iche’ history and cosmology, providing a complementary account that attests traditions that must have been widely known and understood. But in many instances the Totonicapán document is richer in detail and departs from the Popol Vuh’s more cursory description of history, genealogy, and political organization. In other instances, it contradicts assertions made by the authors of the Popol Vuh, perhaps a reflection of internal dissent and jealousy between rival lineages within the K’iche’ hierarchy. It also contains significant passages of cosmology and history that do not appear in any other highland Maya text. This volume makes a comprehensive and updated edition of the Title of Totonicapán accessible to scholars and students in history, anthropology, archaeology, and religious studies in Latin America, as well as those interested in Indigenous literature and Native American/Indigenous studies more broadly. It is also a stand-alone work of Indigenous literature that provides additional K’iche’ perspectives, enhancing the reading of other colonial Maya sources.
Titled Americans, 1890
by Chauncey M DepewThis unique reproduction is the how-to directory which guided wealthy American heiresses in their quest to marry a titled British aristocrat in the turn-of-the-century Downton Abbey era, the core story of the TV series itself. A fascinating Introduction to the "Dollar Princess" trade by noted historian Eric Homberger explains the phenomenon of American brides exchanging enormous dowries for the right to be the Lady of a great English manor. What would entice a young American bride to leave their families, homes and everything familiar to travel thousands of miles away to a land and culture with a myriad of rigid and absolutely foreign social rules, traditions and customs? The bachelors who are chronicled in Titled Americans drew the attention of many aspiring American bridal prospects who thumbed through the pages of this Who's Who of British aristocracy, letting their hearts fill with the fantasy of being the Lady of a great estate as they mulled over the directory's full details of every bachelor's income, property value and net worth!
Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts
by Sarah ThorntonAn innovative investigation of the five strange worlds that worship women’s chests. After years of biopsies, best-selling author Sarah Thornton made the difficult decision to have a double mastectomy. But, after her reconstructive surgery, she was perplexed: What had she lost? And gained? An experienced sleuth, she resolved to venture behind the scenes to uncover the social and cultural significance of breasts. Riotous and galvanizing, Tits Up excavates the diverse truths of mammary glands from the strip club to the operating room, from the nation’s oldest human milk bank to the fit rooms of bra designers. Thornton draws insights from plastic surgeons, lactation consultants, body-positive witches, lingerie models, and “free the nipple” activists to explore the status of breasts as emblems of femininity. She examines how women’s chests have become a billion-dollar business, as well as a stage for debates about race, class, gender, and desire. Everywhere she turns, Thornton encounters chauvinist myths about this elemental body part that quietly justify deficits in women’s bodily autonomy and endorse shortfalls in their political status. Blending sociology, reportage, and personal narrative with refreshing optimism and wit, Thornton has one overriding ambition—to liberate breasts from centuries of patriarchal prejudice.
The Tiv of Central Nigeria: Western Africa Part VIII
by Laura Bohannan Paul BohannanRoutledge is proud to be re-issuing this landmark series in association with the International African Institute. The series, published between 1950 and 1977, brings together a wealth of previously un-co-ordinated material on the ethnic groupings and social conditions of African peoples. Concise, critical and (for its time) accurate, the Ethnographic Survey contains sections as follows: Physical Environment Linguistic Data Demography History & Traditions of Origin Nomenclature Grouping Cultural Features: Religion, Witchcraft, Birth, Initiation, Burial Social & Political Organization: Kinship, Marriage, Inheritance, Slavery, Land Tenure, Warfare & Justice Economy & Trade Domestic Architecture Each of the 50 volumes will be available to buy individually, and these are organized into regional sub-groups: East Central Africa, North-Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, West Central Africa, Western Africa, and Central Africa Belgian Congo. The volumes are supplemented with maps, available to view on routledge.com or available as a pdf from the publishers.
Tōjisha Manga: Japan’s Graphic Memoirs of Brain and Mental Health
by Yoshiko OkuyamaThis book defines tōjisha manga as Japan’s autobiographical comics in which the author recounts the experience of a mental or neurological condition in a unique medium of text and image. Yoshiko Okuyama argues that tōjisha manga illuminate otherwise “faceless” individuals and humanize their invisible tribulations because the first-person narrative makes their lived experience more authentic and relatable to the reader. Part I introduces the evolution of the term tōjisha, the tōjisha movements, and other relevant social phenomena and concepts. Part II analyzes five representative titles to demonstrate the humanizing power of tōjisha manga, drawing on interviews with the authors of these manga and examining how psychological or brain-related symptoms are artistically depicted in approximately 40 drawings. This book is highly recommended to not only scholars of disability studies and comic studies but also global fans of manga who are interested in the graphic memoirs of serious social issues.
To Address You as My Friend: African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln
by Jonathan W. WhiteMany African Americans of the Civil War era felt a personal connection to Abraham Lincoln. For the first time in their lives, an occupant of the White House seemed concerned about the welfare of their race. Indeed, despite the tremendous injustice and discrimination that they faced, African Americans now had confidence to write to the president and to seek redress of their grievances. Their letters express the dilemmas, doubts, and dreams of both recently enslaved and free people in the throes of dramatic change. For many, writing Lincoln was a last resort. Yet their letters were often full of determination, making explicit claims to the rights of U.S. citizenship in a wide range of circumstances. This compelling collection presents more than 120 letters from African Americans to Lincoln, most of which have never before been published. They offer unflinching, intimate, and often heart-wrenching portraits of Black soldiers' and civilians' experiences in wartime. As readers continue to think critically about Lincoln's image as the "Great Emancipator," this book centers African Americans' own voices to explore how they felt about the president and how they understood the possibilities and limits of the power vested in the federal government.
To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back: Memories of an East LA Outlaw
by Ernie López Rafael Pérez-TorresWhen Ernie López was a boy selling newspapers in Depression-era Los Angeles, his father beat him when he failed to bring home the expected eighty to ninety cents a day. When the beatings became unbearable, he took to petty stealing to make up the difference. As his thefts succeeded, Ernie’s sense of necessity got tangled up with ambition and adventure. At thirteen, a joyride in a stolen car led to a sentence in California’s harshest juvenile reformatory. The system’s failure to show any mercy soon propelled López into a cycle of crime and incarceration that resulted in his spending decades in some of America’s most notorious prisons, including four and a half years on death row for a murder López insists he did not commit. To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back is the personal life story of a man who refused to be broken by either an abusive father or an equally abusive criminal justice system. While López freely admits that “I’ve been no angel,” his insider’s account of daily life in Alcatraz and San Quentin graphically reveals the violence, arbitrary infliction of excessive punishment, and unending monotony that give rise to gang cultures within the prisons and practically insure that parolees will commit far worse crimes when they return to the streets. Rafael Pérez-Torres discusses how Ernie López’s experiences typify the harsher treatment that ethnic and minority suspects often receive in the American criminal justice system, as well as how they reveal the indomitable resilience of Chicanos/as and their culture. As Pérez-Torres concludes, “López’s story presents us with the voice of one who—though subjected to a system meant to destroy his soul—not only endured but survived, and in surviving prevailed.”
To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back: Memories of an East LA Outlaw
by Ernie López Rafael Pérez-TorresWhen Ernie López was a boy selling newspapers in Depression-era Los Angeles, his father beat him when he failed to bring home the expected eighty to ninety cents a day. <P><P>When the beatings became unbearable, he took to petty stealing to make up the difference. As his thefts succeeded, Ernie's sense of necessity got tangled up with ambition and adventure. At thirteen, a joyride in a stolen car led to a sentence in California's harshest juvenile reformatory. The system's failure to show any mercy soon propelled López into a cycle of crime and incarceration that resulted in his spending decades in some of America's most notorious prisons, including four and a half years on death row for a murder López insists he did not commit.