For the past five years, journalist Sarah Garland has followed the lives
of current and former gang members living in Hempstead on the border of
Garden City, Long Island. Affiliated with Mara Salvatrucha and 18th
Street, their troubling personal stories expose the cruel realities of
segregation, racial income gaps, and poverty that lie hidden behind
suburban white picket fences.
As Garland travels from Los Angeles to El Salvador and back to the East
Coast, she reveals a disturbing cycle of poverty in which families,
fleeing from troubled Central American cities, move into America's
suburban backyards, only to find the pattern of violence repeating
itself. Brilliantly reported and sensitively told, Gangs in Garden
City draws back the veil on a hidden, troubling world.