Grow Your Hair Out: Chicano Gang Masculinity and Embodiment in Recovery

• In Event: Masculinities at the Forefront

Abstract

Using ethnographic data from Los Angeles, this paper examines how bodily displays and practices deepen participation in gang recovery. Two distinctive faith-based programs—Homeboy Industries and Victory Outreach—facilitated exit from gangs by reshaping and redirecting men’s embodiment. Recovery’s body projects negotiated masculine bodily displays from gang member to "family man" or "man of God" by reshaping malleable facets of men’s embodiment. Furthermore, gang recovery leaders asserted and protected their status by stigmatizing masculine gang embodiment. Lastly, because some subjects had difficulty overcoming rigid facets of embodiment—such as drug addiction—recovery provided bodily practices for resisting rigid facets of gang embodiment and refashioning men as reformed. Whereas some research on gang exit has departed from a life course perspective of crime desistance and emphasized role exit, this article suggests that social inequalities and gendered contestations are central to gang exit. Bodily displays and practices deepen commitment to exit from gang life by constructing new moral universes and legitimating participants as “family men” or “men of God.”

Author

• Edward Flores, University of California, Merced