Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen - Hardcover

Sanchez, Reymundo; Rodriguez, Sonia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556527225 ISBN 13: 9781556527227

Verlag: A Cappella Books, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

This is a raw and powerful memoir not only of one woman’s struggle to survive the streets but also of her ascent to the top ranks of the new mafia, where the only people more dangerous than rival gangs were members of her own. At age five Sonia Rodriguez’s stepfather began to abuse her; at 10 she was molested by her uncle and beaten by her mother when she told on him; and by 13 her home had become a hangout for the Latin Kings and Queens who were friends with her older sister. Threatened by rival gang members at school, Sonia turned away from her education and extracurricular activities in favor of a world of drugs and violence. The Latin Kings, one of the largest and most notorious street gangs in America, became her refuge, but its violence cost her friends, freedom, self-respect, and nearly her life. As a Latin Queen, she experienced the exhilarating highs and unbelievable lows of gang life. From being shot at by her own gang and kicked out at age 18 with an infant daughter to rejoining the gang and distinguishing herself as a leader, her legacy as Lady Q was cemented both for her willingness to commit violence and for her role as a drug mule. For the first time, a woman’s perspective on gang life is presented.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Reymundo Sanchez is the pseudonym of a former Latin King who no longer lives in Chicago. He is the author of My Bloody Life and Once a King, Always a King, and has appeared on Fox News Chicago, Telemundo, and Univision. Sonia Rodriguez is the pseudonym of a former Latin Queen who no longer lives in Chicago.

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LADY Q

THE RISE AND FALL OF A LATIN QUEENBy REYMUNDO SANCHEZ SONIA RODRIGUEZ

CHICAGO REVIEW PRESS

Copyright © 2008 Reymundo Sanchez and Sonia Rodriguez
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55652-722-7

Contents

Prologue by Reymundo Sanchez.........................ix1 Touch of Love......................................12 Damaged Goods......................................153 The Birth of a Rebel...............................214 Loss of Innocence..................................355 Lady Q Emerges.....................................476 The Benefits of Royalty............................717 The Queen of Talk..................................938 All in the Family..................................1059 The Queen of Kings.................................11910 Business Is Personal..............................13911 The Price of Loyalty..............................15912 Thy Kingdom Gone..................................18113 Change but Still the Same.........................19714 Moving On, Painfully..............................21715 If I Should Die Before I Wake.....................23316 Results of a Discarded Life.......................247Epilogue by Sonia Rodriguez..........................261Afterword by Reymundo Sanchez........................267

Chapter One

Touch of Love

Sonia Rodriguez was born in 1967 in Puerto Rico in the middle of everything-the middle child of three girls, in the middle of an abusive home, and in the middle of the commotion that was her family life. Sonia's mother, Marta, was a stereotypical Puerto Rican woman: illiterate, uneducated, and unable to survive without a man-a welfare mother who had no ambition to improve her life. She was very petite, with the body of a little girl. She spoke no English, had a third-grade education, and began having children at age sixteen. Sonia and her older sister, Vivian, had the same father, who had died of pneumonia when Sonia was still a baby. Marta had quickly remarried, to a man named Carlos, and the couple had a baby girl together, Sonia and Vivian's younger sister, Jazmin. When Sonia was three, Carlos decided to move the family to Chicago, where he hoped to find factory work.

Sonia's older sister, Vivian, was born with a physical disability-both of her feet turned inward, which prevented her from being able to walk. This deformity required many operations to correct. Because of this, all of Sonia's mother's attention was reserved for Vivian.

Sonia was five years old when her stepfather began to physically abuse her. At the time, she was having consistent nightmares and walking in her sleep. Almost nightly Sonia dreamt that a man climbed through her window, approached her while she slept, and then touched her. She would wake up crying and afraid. Ignoring Sonia's problem was one thing, but her mother expressed her disbelief with a barrage of insults. She dismissed both the nightmares and the sleepwalking as Sonia's attempt to steal attention away from Vivian. From this tender age Sonia was already filled with doubts about whether her mother loved her.

Eventually Carlos left the family and returned to Puerto Rico, which made an already difficult financial situation even worse. Marta collected government assistance, but this hardly took care of the needs of a family of four.

While the constant fighting and almost daily beatings stopped, the lack of attention from her mother persisted. Vivian's operations allowed her to walk, even though her feet still pointed inward a little, and she therefore required less attention, but that didn't seem to change the amount of time her mother had to pay attention to Sonia. Additionally, although the family was so poor that there was very little to break or lose, Sonia was blamed for anything that turned up broken or missing. That would soon change, however, when Marta met another man.

Sonia's new stepfather was named Juan. He was a short, stocky Puerto Rican who seemed to have an endless supply of money. Within months, Juan moved Sonia and her family from a cheaply furnished, roach-infested, two-bedroom apartment to a lavishly furnished, three-bedroom apartment near Humboldt Park. Sonia, now six years old, welcomed the change because of how nicely her new stepfather treated her. Plus, there was now plenty of food in the house.

Juan spoke very little English although he'd lived in Chicago most of his life. His financial success came from selling heroin, in both large and small quantities. Because of this, the narcotics division of the Chicago Police Department raided the family's apartment about four times a year. Sonia didn't really know what was going on at the time, but she grew to dislike the police because of how they broke through either their front or back door with their guns drawn, screaming orders. All the adults in the house would be handcuffed and the children gathered and placed on the sofa in the living room. Sometimes the police released all the adults and took Juan with them, but mostly they just left without taking anyone into custody. The few times the police did take Juan into custody, he returned home within a couple of hours. To Sonia it seemed more like a game the police played with Juan than anything real. During each and every raid the police left destruction throughout the apartment, which Sonia, Vivian, Jazmin, and their mother cleaned up. These raids were Sonia's only contact with the police, and the episodes left her distrustful of them.

Despite all this turmoil and negativity in her life, Sonia was a good student at Von Humboldt Elementary School. Vivian was also a very good student, whose successes her mother readily acknowledged and bragged about to friends and family. But she didn't extend the same praise to Sonia. Trying to please her mom, Sonia worked even harder at school.

As Sonia tried to cope with the absence of her mother's love and the chaos that the drug dealing brought into her home, the fighting and violence within her family soon returned. Sonia had just turned eight years old when Juan ceased being a nice man. Almost overnight he became an abusive monster. He had always been loud and somewhat obnoxious, but his angry tirades were usually aimed at Marta and had never escalated into violence. Then suddenly it seemed that Juan grew tired of caring for the children in the family that weren't his own and started using them as punching bags. At first the physical abuse was aimed at Vivian, who now, at the age of eleven, Juan accused of being a little whore. When Marta came to Vivian's defense he redirected his attacks at Sonia. Juan would either slap Sonia across the face or go after her with a belt. Marta often took over the beating that Juan meted out, ironically, to protect Sonia from a more severe beating from Juan. All the while she was beating Sonia, Marta would scream obscenities in Spanish. "Hija de la gran puta, desgraciada no sirves para nada!" ("Disgraceful daughter of a bitch, you're good for nothing!") Jazmin, Sonia's younger sister, now five, with a dark complexion and nappy hair, was not usually targeted, but sometimes Juan beat her as well.

When Sonia was six, her mother had given her extreme spankings with occasional slaps to the face and kicks to the body depending on how angry she was. Now that Sonia was eight, Marta introduced household objects into her repertoire of pain. Anything Sonia's mother could get her hands on became a whipping tool-belts, shoes, extension cords, brooms, even books. When she caught Sonia in a wide-open space of the house, such as the middle of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: A Cappella Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1556527225
• ISBN 13: 9781556527227
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar