Reporter at Large: "The Persian Queens" (From Female Gangs in America: Essays on Girls, Gangs and Gender, P 27-44, 1999, Meda Chesny-Lind and John M. Hagedorn, eds. -- See NCJ-184395)

• NCJ Number: 184397
• Author(s): Robert Rice
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Lake View Press
• Publication Format: Book (Hardbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This essay describes the lives of seven members of a girl gang in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, NY.

Abstract

The girls were all Negroes, all poor and ranging in age from 14 to 19. They were members of a club that professed to be social, in the specific local sense that made social the antonym of fighting. None of them had a police record or was conspicuously delinquent in any way except sexually. At the time this essay was written, the girls among them had produced four babies and a fifth was on the way. For some time, the seven were the ladies’ auxiliary of a particularly active fighting gang. The seven girls seemed to have very little in common and their group seemed to have no goal except to take advantage of the Youth Board’s, or some other social agency’s, free movie tickets, excursions to parks and beaches and other forms of free entertainment. The essay describes the girls’ squalid home surroundings and chaotic family lives. It also describes Brownsville--a neighborhood that was neglected, poor, dull, and hopeless, much like the lives of the seven girl gang members.