The Hollywood Kid

By Oscar Martinez, Juan Martinez, John Washington (translator) , Daniela Maria Ugaz (translator)

Book cover of The Hollywood Kid: The Violent Life and Violent Death of an MS-13 Hitman

Book description

As a boy, Miguel Angel Tobar fled a small town in El Salvador torn apart by warring guerrillas and US-backed death squads. As a teen in Los Angeles, he fought discrimination and beatings by joining a gang, MS-13. By the time the US deported him to San Salvador, the Hollywood…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Hollywood Kid as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In this book, two journalist brothers reveal how young teens can get wrapped up in the world of transnational gangs.

We follow a young man who watches murder and death all around him and ends up joining a squad of the MS-13 in El Salvador, until his own untimely death. The book brings to life the experience – and unavoidability for poor Salvadorans of life under gang control. 

From Abigail's list on the criminalization of immigrant men.

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Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

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