8 Ball Chicks

Gini Sikes

- 4.5 • 14 Ratings

- $13.99

- $13.99

Dismissed by the police as mere adjuncts to or gofers for male gangs, girl gang members are in fact often as emotionally closed off and dangerous as their male counterparts. Carrying razor blades in their mouths and guns in their jackets for defense, they initiate drive-by shootings, carry out car jackings, stomp outsiders who stumble onto or dare to enter the neighborhood, viciously retaliate against other gangs and ferociously guard their home turf.

But Sikes also captures the differences that distinguish girl gangs-abortion, teen pregnancy and teen motherhood, endless beatings and the humiliation of being forced to have sex with a lineup of male gangbangers during initiation, haphazardly raising kids in a household of drugs and guns with a part-time boyfriend off gangbanging himself. Veteran journalist Gini Sikes spends a year in the ghettos following the lives of several key gang members in South Central Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Milwaukee. In 8 Ball Chicks, we discover the fear and desperate desire for respect and status that drive girls into gangs in the first place--and the dreams and ambitions that occasionally help them to escape the catch-22 of their existence.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY DEC 2, 1996

Imagine a world in which teenage girls hang obituaries on their bedroom walls instead of posters. Sikes, former Mademoiselle senior writer and producer of the youth-oriented PBS series In the Mix, knows that world, having spent a year "kicking it" with girl gangs in three U.S. cities (Los Angeles, San Antonio and Milwaukee). According to Sykes, 10% of the American teenagers involved in gangs are girls. These young women organize and identify themselves through their own gangs, which are often auxiliaries of male gangs. They deal drugs, steal, fight and retaliate viciously against their rivals. Sikes's relationship to her subjects ranges from anthropologist to big sister, and her portraits are sympathetic and genuine. The reportage hits hardest when she implicates herself in the events she describes. A party she attends in South Central Los Angeles is rousted by the cops and she is forced, along with the Crip set she is studying, to kneel and put her hands up: "The action felt strange, humiliating. I noticed how much it hurt on the concrete." Her writing is brisk and accessible, though short on analysis or conclusions--rather like a Mademoiselle feature. Still, Sikes offers a convincing, unsettling view of a domain that most would as soon avoid.

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