![]() but virtually every urban center in the nation. Why? Why did her cousin, a precocious young man who dreamed of being a firefighter and a writer, end up dead? Why did he languish in prison? And why, at the age of fifteen, was he in an alley in South Central Los Angeles, holding a gun while trying to steal someone's car?Ĭuz means both ''cousin'' and ''because.'' In this searing memoir, Allen unfurls a ''new American story'' about a world tragically transformed by the sudden availability of narcotics and the rise of street gangs-a collision, followed by a reactionary War on Drugs, that would devastate not only South Central L.A. In a shattering work that shifts between a woman's private anguish over the loss of her beloved baby cousin and a scholar's fierce critique of the American prison system, Danielle Allen seeks answers to what, for many years, felt unanswerable. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |