My Bloody Life

My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King is an autobiography by Reymundo Sanchez (a pseudonym) about his life as a teenage street gang member in Chicago.

The author of the book, Reymundo Sanchez, was a lost boy - disowned by a physically abusive mother and step-father and sent to live with a step-brother who couldn't care less whether he came home or not. He soon learned that survival on the streets depends on whom he counted on among his friends and to which gang he belonged. Initiated into the Boulevard Latin Kings 24(sacramento 24) by performing his first hit at the age of 14, Lil Loco, as he became known, quickly earned a reputation for violence, rape, attempted murder, drug dealing, gangbanging, and living up to his name...Lil' Crazy. For ten years a 30-block area of Chicago defined his reality. Lil Loco, still as a child, and then a minor, broke every rule in the book. This included snitching, in his own words "we told them almost everybody was there, then pointed out the rival gangs leaders to the police, who threw them in the van". It is a story of his odyssey through the ranks of the new mafia, where the only people more dangerous than rival gangs are the members of your own. It was his kingdom when he rode the highs of gang life, and his hell when he lived the lows. Reymundo Sanchez is a pseudonym, and is not the real author's name.

See also

Latin Kings