Audiobook9 hours
Once a King, Always a King: The Unmaking of a Latin King
Written by Reymundo Sanchez
Narrated by Rudy Sanda
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
This riveting sequel to My Bloody Life traces Reymundo Sanchez's struggle to create a "normal" life outside the Latin Kings, one of the nation's most notorious street gangs, and to move beyond his past.
Sanchez illustrates how the Latin King motto "once a king, always a king" rings true and details the difficulty and danger of leaving that life behind. Filled with heart-pounding scenes of his backslide into drugs, sex, and violence, Once a King, Always a King recounts how Sanchez wound up in prison and provides an engrossing firsthand account of how the Latin Kings are run from inside the prison system. Harrowing testaments to Sanchez's determination to rebuild his life include his efforts to separate his family from gang life and his struggle to adapt to marriage and the corporate world. Despite temptations, nightmares, regressions into violence, and his own internal demons, Sanchez makes an uneasy peace with his new life.
This raw, powerful, and brutally honest memoir traces the transformation of an accomplished gang-banger into a responsible citizen.
Sanchez illustrates how the Latin King motto "once a king, always a king" rings true and details the difficulty and danger of leaving that life behind. Filled with heart-pounding scenes of his backslide into drugs, sex, and violence, Once a King, Always a King recounts how Sanchez wound up in prison and provides an engrossing firsthand account of how the Latin Kings are run from inside the prison system. Harrowing testaments to Sanchez's determination to rebuild his life include his efforts to separate his family from gang life and his struggle to adapt to marriage and the corporate world. Despite temptations, nightmares, regressions into violence, and his own internal demons, Sanchez makes an uneasy peace with his new life.
This raw, powerful, and brutally honest memoir traces the transformation of an accomplished gang-banger into a responsible citizen.
More audiobooks from Reymundo Sanchez
My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Once a King, Always a King
Rating: 4.388888888888889 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
54 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good book. The narrator could have been Spanish speaking, so he could pronounce some of the words properly.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book. It gives you hope in the end that maybe if your are having a hard life that maybe if you dedicate yourself that you can change too.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of the all time greatest duologies of all time with With Bloody Life.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was as good at the first one. I love the way he writes!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not nearly as good or as engaging as My Bloody Life, Once a King, Always a King, tells the story of Reymundo Sanchez after he is "violated out" of the Latin Kings.The first part of the book comes across as nothing more than Sanchez's braggadocio vis a vis how many women he can screw, often in more-erotic-than necessary-detail. It's hard to feel like he regrets it when he describes it with such relish. The book picks up when Rey lands in prison on drug charges, giving sparse but interesting information about what jail life is for gang members. Not to mention demonstrating how prison is a breeding ground for gangs. However, the book soon hits a lull in again in describing Sanchez's relationship with a college graduate in excruciating detail. His attempt to build a new life with her is interesting, to be sure, but their overall relationship? Not so much. Nor are his endless struggles to come to terms with his feelings for his mother.While the language and sentence structure in this book is just as juvenile as it is in the first book, for some reason it grates more here. Perhaps it's because the concepts being described in My Bloody Life matched the linguistic skills, while Sanchez is struggling for higher expression here. Not a waste of time if you read and enjoyed the first book -- after all, you are probably as curious as I was to see how it all turns out -- but not a stellar read.