Once a King, Always a King by Reymundo Sanchez

Once a King, always a king based in Humboldt Park a community in Chicago is the second book from My Bloody life. Reymundo better know as Lil' Loco. Describes us how he is trying to become a better person to society and to himself. But how difficult it is to attempt to escape the only lifestyle he has known all his life. How difficult is for him to keep a job from staying away from drugs and alcohol with no education other than his high school diploma. Reymundo who he has no family support, ends up doing time for covering some else on a drug charge. During time in jail he tells us how he wants to get out and find a job and recover from all the partying and drugs. Until he meets Marilyn, a very smart student at University of Illinois at Chicago and beautiful. Rey gets to know her a friendship blossoms and they fall in love. They decide to move out of state to Dallas to start a new life for both of them but this plan never really works out since their past hunts them. Marilyn has her own issues, her own dark past involving her family mostly her father that at the end disrupts her relationship with Rey. They end up braking up their relationship and going their separate way. At the end of the book he explains how having no support from his family, having a mother that was dependent on men and how his childhood violence end up being and influence on him for his gang lifestyle. How difficult was to stop socializing with gang members because everyone knew him as one. Rey tells us that he has a new life, a new family of his own and he loves his family. He has almost no contact with his mother or sisters or the rest of his family just because he decided to move on. Also how his past still hunts him during his dreams at night and the aggressive behavior he created during the gangbanging days have to be controlled with medication. All in all I really like the book not because how detail it is but because the book can send a message how the gangbang lifestyle ruins lives not just the gang member lives but others around him and the community. RPA