The front cover blurb from Publishers Weekly proclaims it to be "a slow-motion riot of drugs, sex and gunplay", and the popularity and vicarious thrills of gangster movies and books might cause you to interpret this as an invitation to an amusement park.

But while this is a true story of the author's childhood and teenage years, with his initiation into the Latin Kings being the center of the story, this is a work of horror.

In real life, there's no glamor or excitement in the life of street gangs, only fear and abuse, violence and addiction. The first thing that happens in this book is that Sanchez, aged five, is raped by an older cousin.

This is just the beginning of a young life of pain and terror, as young people everywhere are abandoned if not outright tortured by the families and institutions alike and lose themselves to gangs that appear to provide the only place to belong and be protected.

The author makes clear that that belonging and protection are flimsy and arbitrary enough to be an illusion. He has literally nothing good to say about this life and he tells his story not to entertain but to warn his readers.

The neighborhood in question is the Logan Square/Humboldt Park area and many of the locations described are still recognizable. You can stand on corners where people were killed and think about who they were and the senselessness of their deaths. My Bloody Life begins like this: "Puerto Rico, 1963. I was born in the back of a 1957 Chevy on the way to the hospital. I may have been born where I was conceived. Considering that my mother went into labor while sitting in the outhouse, being born in a car was not so bad."