There was a time when suburbia and gangs would rarely be used in the same sentence. Gangs were considered an urban problem, and the suburbs were one of the solutions. Times have changed drastically, as this in-depth study of gang life in Long Island's Nassau County communities reveals. Journalist Sarah Garland spent over five years researching gang activity and the experiences of gang members. Her interviews and investigations show this issue to be far more complicated than the simplistic, hot button topics of immigration and ethnicity. Garland explores many questions, including: What do the youths who join gangs have in common with other teens on Long island? Why do they choose to join gangs? What do gangs provide that their homes and communities do not? And, what does the growth of gangs say about life on Long Island, or about the suburbs and the American dream?
No one likes listening to smug hippies bragging about how they don't use toilet paper, or worse yet, lecturing about the evils of plastic bags and SUVs. But most of us do want to lessen our ecological footprint. With this in mind, Farquharson takes on the intense personal challenge of making one green change to her lifestyle every single day for a year to ultimately figure out what's doable and what's too hardcore.
Vanessa goes to the extremes of selling her car, unplugging the fridge, and washing her hair with vinegar, but she also does easy things like switching to an all-natural lip balm. All the while, she is forced to reflect on what it truly means to be green.
Whether confronting her environmental hypocrisy or figuring out the best place in her living room for a compost bin full of worms and rotting cabbage, Vanessa writes about her foray into the green world with self-deprecating, humorous, and accessible insight. This isn't a how-to book of tips, it's not about being eco-chic; it's an honest look at what happens when an average girl throws herself into the murkiest depths of the green movement.
A whimsical and self-deprecating narrative of the author's year-long quest to lessen her carbon footprint describes how she endeavored to make a green change in her lifestyle every day to assess which measures were realistic, a haphazard effort throughout which she confronted a range of challenges including her own environmental misperceptions. Original.
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