My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King

Content Warning: This section mentions abuse. 

Economic instability and systemic inequality manifest in multiple ways throughout Reymundo Sanchez’s memoir. His adolescence was marked by cramped and unsafe living conditions, as well as the lack of basic resources such as food, clothing, and education. Sanchez’s family, like many others in impoverished communities, struggled to meet basic needs, which exacerbated tension and violence within the household. For example, his stepfathers’ abuse was intertwined with their inability to maintain employment, reflecting how economic stress often fuels familial breakdown.

Sanchez also highlights how systemic inequities—whether through disinvestment, redevelopment, or stereotypes—create environments where gangs offer not only survival mechanisms but also a distorted sense of identity and community. The researcher Laurence Ralph explores similar ideas in his book Renegade Dreams. Sanchez depicts the systemic roots of inequality by focusing on Chicago’s inner-city neighborhoods, where low-income, predominantly Latino communities are concentrated. These areas are marked by high unemployment rates, limited access to quality education, and inadequate social services—conditions that stem from historical patterns of discrimination and disinvestment, as Dayna Bowen Mathews argues in Just Medicine and David A. Ansell posits in The Death Gap. In this environment, survival often takes precedence over long-term aspirations, leaving young people like Sanchez vulnerable to the allure of gangs, which appear to offer stability, respect, and financial opportunities.

The broader disinvestment in Sanchez’s community further compounds the challenges faced by its youth. Schools in low-income areas like Humboldt Park, where much of the events described in My Bloody Life took place, are often underfunded and overcrowded, offering few opportunities for academic success or upward mobility. Sanchez’s experiences with education reflect this systemic neglect: His reassignment to an impersonal and under-resourced school alienated him further, driving him deeper into gang life.

Additionally, the lack of recreational spaces, mentorship programs, and employment opportunities for youth exacerbates feelings of hopelessness and disenfranchisement. Sanchez repeatedly describes how boredom and idleness contributed to his and his peers’ attraction to gangs, which offered excitement, camaraderie, and a sense of purpose. Sociologically, this reflects the concept of social disorganization, where the breakdown of community institutions and social networks in impoverished neighborhoods leads to increased deviant behavior as a means of coping.

Like Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know, Sanchez recounts his childhood in a home marked by neglect and violence, with a stepfather who physically and emotionally abused him and a mother who failed to intervene, compounding his sense of abandonment. Similarly, Foo reveals how the hidden traumas of her parents were expressed through their abuse and emotional detachment. In both cases, the family became not a sanctuary but a crucible of pain, fostering cycles of dysfunction that have extended into the authors’ adulthoods.

Moreover, in My Bloody Life, Sanchez describes how police brutality and a lack of support systems pushed him toward gang life and, for a brief period of time, prison. Resonating with Shane Bauer’s American Prison account about the prison industrial complex, where profit-focused private prisons exacerbate the conditions that lead to recidivism, Sanchez explores how profit-driven systems—whether gangs or prisons—thrive on the vulnerabilities of marginalized communities.