The Dream Shattered: Vietnamese Gangs in America

By Patrick Du Phuoc Long and Laura Ricard

Book Overview

An eloquent account of the economic, social, and cultural difficulties that disrupt traditional family relationships and push young people into acts of violent, often ruthless, crime. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555533140
• ISBN13: 9781555533144
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: Northeastern University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Disturbingly Real

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.

One of the most insighful books I've ever read.

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.