Media Advisory
‘Homeboys’ to discuss violent encounters, life experience
‘The Tattooed Soldier’ to bring
former gang members to Cal State L.A. Feb. 10
Los Angeles, CA -- What motivates characters to engage in violence? What are the effects of these forms of violence? These questions will be addressed as former gang members discuss their life experiences before and after their involvement with Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles.
As part of Cal State L.A.’s One Campus, One Book initiative, the University Library presents a panel discussion, “Homeboy Industries Experience,” at Cal State L.A.’s Student Housing Lounge Tuesday, Feb. 10, 6-9 p.m.
Cal State L.A.’s One Campus, One Book, an initiative designed to encourage the campus community to read one book collectively, selected Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier for its 2008-09 reading. Tobar’s novel addresses many themes related to the immigrant and Los Angeles experience, specifically the prevalent occurrence of violence.
For more than 20 years, Homeboy Industries has helped at-risk and formerly gang-involved youths to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training and education.
The One Campus, One Book initiative will also present a video screening of “If The Mango Tree Could Speak,” a documentary video of children and the war in Guatemala, on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 8-9:30 p.m., at the Student Housing Lounge on the CSULA campus.
Tobar said, “The Tattooed Soldier was born from my experiences as the son of Guatemalan immigrants, and as a young reporter assigned to cover the impoverished neighborhoods of central Los Angeles.”
For more information, go to /library/ocob/ or contact Alice Kawakami, University Librarian, at (323) 343-3954 or [email protected]
Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 205,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12. Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu