Reviews
This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang by Samuel Logan
claundici's review
2.0
This isn't a reportage, but it's not a real biography either; plus the narrator is pretty bland boring and inconsistent.
elainareads's review
1.0
This is one of the worst books I've ever read. Reads like a poorly written true crimes book. Repetitive, poorly researched--this book was just insultingly bad.
endlessreader's review
2.0
This is for the Mara Salvatrucha has one thing going for it. It's compulsively readable. Now, I for one adore non-fiction books, but I can see why some people would find them a bit dry to read. I don't think any of those people would have trouble with This is for the Mara Salvatrucha because it does go at a really fast pace and the way it's written is like that of a fiction book, which it makes really easy to get into. On top of that, it's one of those books that can't really put down. When I wasn't reading it, all I could think about was going back to it and finishing it. However, when it comes to This is for the Mara Salvatrucha, the fact that you can't put it down is the only thing it has going for it.
I mentioned that This is for the Mara Salvatrucha is written like a novel which is why it made it so readable. However, the fact that it's written like a novel is one of the reasons I had issues with it. Here's the thing, the author of this book, continually writes what the main players in this book are thinking...whether they're dead or not. Which means that he couldn't have possibly known what they were thinking at any one given time...which means that he made it up...which is a big NO-NO in non-fiction.
Another disappointing thing about This is for the Mara Salvatrucha was that it's a very surface-level book. It doesn't dig deep into the Mara Salvatrucha at all. It's dealings with drugs, prostitution, murders...all of that was pretty much glossed over. This book wasn't as much about the Mara Salvatrucha as much as it was about Brenda Paz, a girl who happened to be involved with the Mara Salvatrucha. This isn't a bad thing, perse, if the book wasn't subtitled as "Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang". The book doesn't go inside the gang as much as the subtitle alluded to.
So, overall, I found This is for the Mara Salvatrucha to be a disappointing read. While it was a page-turner, it doesn't go very deep into what the book is supposed to be about: the Mara Salvatrucha. Plus, while adding stylish flair to your writing is all great and good, but if you're adding things that you don't have concrete proof happened and don't mention that it's speculative, than you lose a bit of credibility. So, two stars.
I mentioned that This is for the Mara Salvatrucha is written like a novel which is why it made it so readable. However, the fact that it's written like a novel is one of the reasons I had issues with it. Here's the thing, the author of this book, continually writes what the main players in this book are thinking...whether they're dead or not. Which means that he couldn't have possibly known what they were thinking at any one given time...which means that he made it up...which is a big NO-NO in non-fiction.
Another disappointing thing about This is for the Mara Salvatrucha was that it's a very surface-level book. It doesn't dig deep into the Mara Salvatrucha at all. It's dealings with drugs, prostitution, murders...all of that was pretty much glossed over. This book wasn't as much about the Mara Salvatrucha as much as it was about Brenda Paz, a girl who happened to be involved with the Mara Salvatrucha. This isn't a bad thing, perse, if the book wasn't subtitled as "Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang". The book doesn't go inside the gang as much as the subtitle alluded to.
So, overall, I found This is for the Mara Salvatrucha to be a disappointing read. While it was a page-turner, it doesn't go very deep into what the book is supposed to be about: the Mara Salvatrucha. Plus, while adding stylish flair to your writing is all great and good, but if you're adding things that you don't have concrete proof happened and don't mention that it's speculative, than you lose a bit of credibility. So, two stars.
blkmymorris's review
4.0
This is a well paced true crime novel, and it offer a good introduction to MS-13, a major gang in the US. The only problem is that the gang names are used so often, that I had trouble connecting to the real names used in the news.
I was very interested in how the Witness Protection program was not able to keep a teenaged witness safe.
I was very interested in how the Witness Protection program was not able to keep a teenaged witness safe.
rosseroo's review
3.0
I picked this up because MS-13 is very active in my area (DC/Maryland/Virginia) and I was curious to learn more about how they operated on a national and international level, what their history is, what their main rackets are, what the structure is, what the command and control is, and so forth. However, this is not a book that's going to give you very much of that. Rather, it is a detailed account of the sad story of Brenda Paz -- a teenage MS-13 member whose 2003 murder was a very high-profile news item in the region.
Investigative reporter Logan uses Brenda's story as a way of writing about MS-13, and the book follows her for about two years, starting roughly from the time she moved to Texas to live with her uncle's family until her murder. Her relatives apparently didn't give her a whole lot of nurturing or attention, and as a result, the otherwise extremely bright and bubbly Brenda drifted into gang life. She quickly made friends with a local MS-13 clique, became the girlfriend of their leader, and was jumped in as a member. She spent a little less than a year with the gang, mainly in Texas and Virginia, before she decided to cooperate with police rather than serve jail time. Her apparent photographic memory made her a treasure trove for the cops, and she gave countless interviews to law enforcement officials from all over the country, culminating in a lengthy video-taped session that was adapted into a training video for police on MS-13. Naturally, a number of MS-13 people began to suspect her of being an informant, and as a result of a series of farcical bureaucratic errors and her own hubris, she was killed.
While this picture from inside the gang is often very vivid and interesting, it's not particularly in-depth. Most of what you learn about MS-13 are the basics that have been covered in any number of magazine, television, and newspaper profiles over the last few years. I guess if you had never heard of MS-13, it provides a very solid overview, but it felt pretty skimpy to me. To be fair, writing about closed gangs is not exactly easy, and it's next to impossible to get a truly in-depth anthropological picture of one. Logan does good work with the material he has, spinning Brenda's story into a compelling tragedy and cautionary tale. Ultimately, however, she comes across as yet another teenager without strong family involvement in her life and exceedingly poor decision-making skills.
Logan uses one stylistic device that I didn't care for, and that's inventing what people are thinking when there is absolutely no way he could know. I understand that this is an established practice in some forms of narrative non-fiction, but it really bothered me when in the midst of his retelling of a murder, we are told what thoughts are running through the victim's mind as he's about to die. It's really unnecessary, and is the kind of sensationalistic device that undermines the credibility of the book.
Speaking of sensationalism, by the end of the book, it's still not clear to me why MS-13 is regarded as dramatically more violent than any other gang with cliques throughout the country (such as the Bloods and Crips). No data is provided in the book to make such a case, and the anecdotal examples, while horrific, don't strike me as dramatically different from those perpetrated by other gangs. On the flip side, I do think MS-13 represents a very different and more serious problem than classic American gangs, if only for their international networks. Details about this international dimension are severely lacking in this book -- such as the exact nature of their partnership with Mexican drug traffickers, a proper investigation of the rumor that they have assisted Al Qaeda, and their influence in Central America (in fact, their most infamous crime -- a mass killing in Honduras -- isn't mentioned in the book). Still, this is a nice narrative introduction to MS-13 in America that fills the need for those with an interest in street gangs.
Investigative reporter Logan uses Brenda's story as a way of writing about MS-13, and the book follows her for about two years, starting roughly from the time she moved to Texas to live with her uncle's family until her murder. Her relatives apparently didn't give her a whole lot of nurturing or attention, and as a result, the otherwise extremely bright and bubbly Brenda drifted into gang life. She quickly made friends with a local MS-13 clique, became the girlfriend of their leader, and was jumped in as a member. She spent a little less than a year with the gang, mainly in Texas and Virginia, before she decided to cooperate with police rather than serve jail time. Her apparent photographic memory made her a treasure trove for the cops, and she gave countless interviews to law enforcement officials from all over the country, culminating in a lengthy video-taped session that was adapted into a training video for police on MS-13. Naturally, a number of MS-13 people began to suspect her of being an informant, and as a result of a series of farcical bureaucratic errors and her own hubris, she was killed.
While this picture from inside the gang is often very vivid and interesting, it's not particularly in-depth. Most of what you learn about MS-13 are the basics that have been covered in any number of magazine, television, and newspaper profiles over the last few years. I guess if you had never heard of MS-13, it provides a very solid overview, but it felt pretty skimpy to me. To be fair, writing about closed gangs is not exactly easy, and it's next to impossible to get a truly in-depth anthropological picture of one. Logan does good work with the material he has, spinning Brenda's story into a compelling tragedy and cautionary tale. Ultimately, however, she comes across as yet another teenager without strong family involvement in her life and exceedingly poor decision-making skills.
Logan uses one stylistic device that I didn't care for, and that's inventing what people are thinking when there is absolutely no way he could know. I understand that this is an established practice in some forms of narrative non-fiction, but it really bothered me when in the midst of his retelling of a murder, we are told what thoughts are running through the victim's mind as he's about to die. It's really unnecessary, and is the kind of sensationalistic device that undermines the credibility of the book.
Speaking of sensationalism, by the end of the book, it's still not clear to me why MS-13 is regarded as dramatically more violent than any other gang with cliques throughout the country (such as the Bloods and Crips). No data is provided in the book to make such a case, and the anecdotal examples, while horrific, don't strike me as dramatically different from those perpetrated by other gangs. On the flip side, I do think MS-13 represents a very different and more serious problem than classic American gangs, if only for their international networks. Details about this international dimension are severely lacking in this book -- such as the exact nature of their partnership with Mexican drug traffickers, a proper investigation of the rumor that they have assisted Al Qaeda, and their influence in Central America (in fact, their most infamous crime -- a mass killing in Honduras -- isn't mentioned in the book). Still, this is a nice narrative introduction to MS-13 in America that fills the need for those with an interest in street gangs.
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