This was such an important memoir to read. I put it on my classroom shelf for my high school students to read as well. It is so well written and emotional. It is really a must read for people. We can all benefit from it.

Ethnographer/anthropologist Laurence Ralph tells the tragic story of Luis Alberto Quiñonez. Sito, as he was known, was the 19-year-old half-brother of Ralph's stepson. Ralph grapples with the backstory and aftermath of Sito's murder, recounting Sito's experiences with juvenile detention and the criminal justice system. In so doing, the author weaves in theories of justice and themes of masculinity, criminalization, violence, and mourning.
This is not just a riveting, nuanced account of murder, grief, and revenge. It reckons with "the spirit of revenge that's embedded in our legal system so that future generations don't repeat our mistakes." It imagines the possibility of restorative justice and the transformation of a legal system that is openly stacked against people of color and the impoverished. It imagines the possibility of healing.
I would recommend this to those looking for a gripping memoir combined with compelling sociological study.

[Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

This is a story you will never forget. The author, Laurence Ralph is the stepfather of the title character Sito’s half-brother. Ralph is also a professor of Anthropology at Princeton who has written quite a bit about gangs and policing issues.

Sito is only 19 when he is murdered and the murderer is 17. Ralph plunges in to learn more about the gang culture in San Fransisco and learns and reveals just how broken the system is. Sito was clawing his way out of the hole he had dug as a teen and his murder was tied to old behaviors. Ralph discovers gangs reach far into the jail and juvenile system and reform has done little to change the cycle. Learn more about the American Justice System and its failures of in SITO

This is a heartfelt book told from a family members perspective of a murder victim.

I was intrigued how the City Failed him part of the title would play into the story. It didn't.
There was a lot of things that you could say failed Sito, but the city was not one of them.

I am going to tread carefully because this is still raw to the family. However, this book does not do the boy justice.

I am happy that the author included the good, Sito going to school, trying to become a social justice advocate.

The downside is that Sito was involved in gangs, he was a heavy drinker and had a violent temper.

The two sides are what makes Sito a human. No one is all good, no one is all bad. It shows he was complicated.

The problem that I had with the book is threefold:
1. The spirits, the stories had no relative bearing upon the book. It was a distraciton.
2. I needed more. We went from Sito getting out of Juvenile Hall and then having a girlfriend to being murdered. Where was the timeline? Was there only two events in Sito life?
3. Did the author reach out to Julius' family to get their side? Did the authors attitude toward juvenile justice change?

Further the family was hung up on one cop said to them in the heat of the movement, brought up several times in the book, yet was never resolved.

Overall, this book could have been a great story about urban juvenile justice, yet it fell so flat with the spiritual talk, the lack of Sito being a human outside of the 2 sides mentioned above, and how exactly did the City fail Sito.

In 2019, anthropology professor Ralph (The Torture Letters) lost a family member to violence: His stepson’s half-brother, nineteen-year-old Sito, was shot to death in San Francisco’s Mission District by another teenager, Julius Williams, as an act of revenge for his own brother’s death at the hands of one of Sito’s friends. Ralph draws on his family’s experiences and his own past research into gang-affiliated and justice-impacted youth to paint an honest, heartbreaking, and enraging picture of Sito’s life and death. Sito invites readers into Sito and Julius’s world, where middle and high schoolers are bullied and threatened into gang membership, which in turn puts them at heightened risk for violence, criminal activity, mental health struggles, and long-term involvement with a criminal justice system that assumes their guilt. Through Sito’s story, we begin to understand the structural inequities and generational traumas that form the backdrop to so many young lives. This painful and personal book will appeal to readers who are willing to look past sensationalized headlines to understand deeper truths about gang violence in America.

This is a story you will never forget. The author, Laurence Ralph is the stepfather of title character Sito’s half-brother. Ralph is also a professor of Anthropology at Princeton who has written quite a bit about gangs and policing issues.

Sito is only 19 when he is murdered and the murderer is 17. Ralph plunges in to learn more about the gang culture in San Fransisco and learns and reveals just how broken the system is. Sito was clawing his way out of the hole he had dug as a teen and his murder was tied to old behaviors. Ralph discovers gangs reach far into the jail and juvenile system and reform has done little to change the cycle. Learn more about the American Justice System and the failures of it in SITO #Sito #LaurenceRalph #Grandcentral