Customer Reviews

The Dream Shattered: Vietnamese Gangs in America

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Long, a counselor at a juvenile detention center in California, discusses the rise of Viet Namese gangs across the US. The book is essentially a lengthy illustration essay that employs narrative accounts of numerous adolescents and their families. Long provides through his firsthand experience, a frightening but sympathetic glimpse at one of the untold results of the war that turned a generation upside down. It is a story filled with cruelty and abandonment on both an individual and a national level. Perhaps the most valuable component of this study is the actual dialogue between Long and his wards. Long is engaging and wise, and the words of his "clients" are often terrifying and explicit.

The author not only addressed the problem, but also showed how he helps solve it. He shows the pain these youth go through so poignantly. I work with vietnamese refugee youth and this book taught me so much in how the vietnamese family works and how to adress certain problems. this is probably the most down to earth book i've ever read. It's definatly easy to read too.

One of the few books out there that capture the stories of Vietnamese refugee youth that turned to a life of gangs. The author covers the plight of the Vietnamese boat refugee population, Amerasians, and the general struggle to find themselves growing up in poverty. A great read for anyone; especially those that grew up with friends and family that were impacted by gang violence. The author focuses on San Jose because he was a counselor at one of the Ranches.