In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences, Series Number 10)

This book is one of the most memorable books from college for me. It really gave me more ability to relate to all human beings. I read this for a cultural anthro course. The man who wrote this made some dangerous choices which gives more weight to the writing. The really like the writing style and found it easy to read. These are real stories of Americans.

No complaints, the product was delivered promptly and as described. Will go with this seller again for sure!

Required class reading, but very easy to read. Characters, their stories, the narrative all contribute to making this an easy, interesting, and insightful read.

This book is a 5 for awakening of what was Harlem NY and for a sociological book, but a 4 because it is not something you will enjoy reading 2x. It is deep, complex, and if you are a young person reading it or someone unfamiliar with the mentallity of the oppressed being an oppressor in a unfeeling world...you may have to stop for a second and take a breath. The book is well written from a sociological and anthropological perspective and it will go from your heart and mind to the pit of your stomach, but it certainly is a wake up call to the social changes and conditions of poverty, drug use & abuse and the people sucked into that world.example: the author goes from talking about being "white" and seen as an outsider and recieving only bits of information to being 'accepted' and listening to "primo" explain when "they" gang raped a junkie and had to pistol whip his cousins wife because she wanted to have sexual relations with him while his cousin "the don" was in jail.It is an extrodinary book and not surprisingly has become more expensive to purchase as the years go forward.

Great book!

The author, an anthropologist specializing in Latin American culture, studied a poor and suffering Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York city for five years, living in it with his wife and infant for three, in order to write this book. For that alone he deserves our respect. But he has also produced a fascinating story about drug dealers and a penetrating analysis of poverty, the drug trade, and street culture. His method was "simply" (in concept but not in execution) to live in the community and hang out with dealers, taping their conversations (with their consent). This approach not only gives us information and insight that cannot be obtained in surveys and other techniques, it also gives the community and its problems a human face that allows the reader to understand "the anguish of growing up poor in the richest city in the world" (p. 8). It is a sympathetic portrayal of a self-destructive subculture and a forceful critique of the "structural" (political, economic, bureaucratic) forces that created and perpetuate it. I recommend it to anthropologists, as a fine example of ethnographic writing and research, but more importantly to those who can make a difference to the residents of El Barrios all across America-to mayors, city councilors, journalists, city planners, social workers, police officers, politicians, and teachers-as well as to all Americans, who should be concerned not only about crime, drugs, and urban decay, but most of all about the senseless albeit practically invisible destruction of so many lives.I assigned this book for a college course in Ethnography, and the students simply loved it. It got the highest rating of any book I have every used. They called it interesting, easy to read, insightful, fantastic, important, mind-boggling, wonderful, disturbing, engaging and exciting, and remarked that it deals with tough questions, could be offensive to some, and should be read by everyone.

This was one of the first books I read for a college course that I actually enjoyed. The lives of Primo, Caesar, Candy, etc., jumped from the pages. This book is useful to the everyday reader who would just like to gain insight into the lives of inner city youth. It is equally useful to the student who wishes to tie the inner city drug problem to greater social conditions. Either way, this book leaves the reader with a great sense of understanding and the inability to ignore the problems or blame the victims of inner city crime.

Striking, horrific at times and ultimately enlightening, this book rips away the facade we'd like to see and gets to what is. It gets to the heart of the struggles those in El Barrio of New York must face. Their viable options are few, their solutions repellent, but these are real people who've been marginalized by mainstream society. For a look inside the El Barrio of the nineties, read this book!