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The Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence, and the American Dream
Randol Contreras came of age in the South Bronx during the 1980s, a time when the community was devastated by cuts in social services, a rise in arson and abandonment, and the rise of crack-cocaine. For this riveting book, he returns to the South Bronx with a sociological eye and provides an unprecedented insider’s look at the workings of a group of Dominican drug robbers. Known on the streets as “Stickup Kids,” these men raided and brutally tortured drug dealers storing large amounts of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and cash.
As a participant observer, Randol Contreras offers both a personal and theoretical account for the rise of the Stickup Kids and their violence. He mainly focuses on the lives of neighborhood friends, who went from being crack dealers to drug robbers once their lucrative crack market opportunities disappeared. The result is a stunning, vivid, on-the-ground ethnographic description of a drug robbery’s violence, the drug market high life, the criminal life course, and the eventual pain and suffering experienced by the casualties of the Crack Era.
Provocative and eye-opening, The Stickup Kids urges us to explore the ravages of the drug trade through weaving history, biography, social structure, and drug market forces. It offers a revelatory explanation for drug market violence by masterfully uncovering the hidden social forces that produce violent and self-destructive individuals. Part memoir, part penetrating analysis, this book is engaging, personal, deeply informed, and entirely absorbing.
As a participant observer, Randol Contreras offers both a personal and theoretical account for the rise of the Stickup Kids and their violence. He mainly focuses on the lives of neighborhood friends, who went from being crack dealers to drug robbers once their lucrative crack market opportunities disappeared. The result is a stunning, vivid, on-the-ground ethnographic description of a drug robbery’s violence, the drug market high life, the criminal life course, and the eventual pain and suffering experienced by the casualties of the Crack Era.
Provocative and eye-opening, The Stickup Kids urges us to explore the ravages of the drug trade through weaving history, biography, social structure, and drug market forces. It offers a revelatory explanation for drug market violence by masterfully uncovering the hidden social forces that produce violent and self-destructive individuals. Part memoir, part penetrating analysis, this book is engaging, personal, deeply informed, and entirely absorbing.
304 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 2012
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300 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 19, 2024
I never thought I would be a fan of cultural criminology but this is hands-down my favorite ethnography and probably my favorite non-fiction book.
I read excerpts of this book for a sophomore sociology seminar and finally finished the whole book four years later.
The book follows some former drug dealers from the South Bronx who became violent drug robbers as the crack epidemic waned in the 90s. The author brings a unique perspective to the book that makes it strongly personal, he not only comes from the South Bronx, but many of the study participants are childhood friends and he himself is a failed drug dealer.
It was a heartbreaking read though because it depicts how marginalization and desperation drove the study participants to committing acts of heinous cruelty in the pursuit of the American Dream.
I read excerpts of this book for a sophomore sociology seminar and finally finished the whole book four years later.
The book follows some former drug dealers from the South Bronx who became violent drug robbers as the crack epidemic waned in the 90s. The author brings a unique perspective to the book that makes it strongly personal, he not only comes from the South Bronx, but many of the study participants are childhood friends and he himself is a failed drug dealer.
It was a heartbreaking read though because it depicts how marginalization and desperation drove the study participants to committing acts of heinous cruelty in the pursuit of the American Dream.
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September 30, 2025read this for school! actually so interesting to read, and i liked the writing style. i also had never heard anything about stickup kids before or the drug dealer side of the crack era and its consequences. enjoyed the look at the high lifers versus the venturers. gonna be thinking about this book for a while
October 7, 2025
actually fantastic ethnography it was so interesting like i was reading a narrative
June 6, 2020
I usually love the books I have to read for school but this one made me want to kms
December 16, 2015
Very informative! It is not like a novel (in comparison to the literary style of Eric Larson). It is an ethnographic study of the drug world and the social structure that creates it. The author uses many sociological theories to help understand the experience that he lived through. I now have a better sense of why any given drug market exists in the first place. Yes, it is at times saturated with sociological theories, but the language does not get too complex.
If you are more of a fiction reader, Eric Larson might be a better fit for if you want to read non-fiction. If you do not mind an academic emphasis, I would recommend this book to understand the trial and tribulations that underprivileged people life through.
If you are more of a fiction reader, Eric Larson might be a better fit for if you want to read non-fiction. If you do not mind an academic emphasis, I would recommend this book to understand the trial and tribulations that underprivileged people life through.
November 3, 2018
This book was da bomb! Anyone interested in politics, social sciences, hip hop, racial equality, substance abuse, issues of violence etc should read this book. Sucks that Contreras faced so many problems trying to get it published. I think it could even work as a fiction novel or a movie. It would have worked great as a gangster flick, but like a realistic one. I like how Contreras tried to be real about these guys even though they were people he grew up with. He didn't hold back and he gave us the raw truth about the lives of stickup kids.
April 13, 2016
Interesting sociological study about the lives of crime led by several Dominican men in the height of the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s. At times I think Contreras gets a little too enmeshed with the lives of the subjects he is reporting on, but I don't think that getting close to violent street criminals like these could have been done any other way. It's a brutal book, but it made for good reading, as well as some interesting thoughts to consider.
October 4, 2013
One of my favorite ethnographies. Randol Contreras is a skilled observer and talented writer. He takes you deep inside the world of stickup kids. I couldn't put this book down. My best guess is that you will like it.
June 11, 2013
A really good new ethnography that is well-written and and compelling in its analysis. The writer's voice and his reflections on methodology are particularly powerful.
June 20, 2019
One could call "Stickup Kids," a sociological tract, if they were in an uncharitable mood (since it's so much more). Or if they really wanted to lay a skein of theory over what, at heart, is a great story, one could even call it auto-ethnographic fieldwork.
What it really is, however, is the story of a young Dominican man who grew up in the South Bronx when (to paraphrase the comedian Joey Diaz), the South Bronx was a bad, bad, baaad, neighborhood. Randol Contreras lived through the tail end of the East Coast crack boom, where it was possible for an 8th grader to make a hundred thousand dollars in a couple days, or for that same child to seal his fate in a hail of bullets in matter of moments. Mr. Contreras even quotes Charles Dickens' famous lines about "the best of times, the worst of times" to describe the crack era, which from the outside looking in seems insane (for the vast majority of America, it was only the worst of times).
The author, however, is not an outsider, but a privileged insider whose friendship going back to childhood with various drug dealers allows him access to the world of the South Bronx underworld that it would have been impossible for most other researchers to get.
Upon returning to his stomping grounds, Contreras links up with old friends, and discovers that in a world where the crack market has tanked, young and ambitious men who dream of riches have taken to torturing mid-level drug dealers in order to get five- and sometimes even six-figure hauls of drugs, money, and jewelry. "Eliminating the middle man" is a common tactic for savvy businessmen, only in this milieu the old truism is taken to nigh-literal extremes (although murder is frowned upon, little things like ears and anal virginity do get eliminated when dealers prove recalcitrant during interrogations).
The book is at its best- and it is one of the best I've read this year- when Mr. Contreras allows his subjects to speak for themselves, unvarnished and unveiled, full of bravado in public as they smoke blunts and drink malt liquor, nervous wrecks racked by pangs of conscience in private, crying and questioning the meaning of the universe in cramped South Bronx apartments during the long nights when they contemplate the damage they've done to the lives of those around them and themselves.
As for the theory the author musters, when it's his alone, or when it's a synthesis of something he learned in school applied to the streets where he grew up, Randol Contreras demonstrates uncommon insight and novel ways of thinking. At other times, he sounds as if he's reading from the same tired homilies as any strident undergrad in a 101 course. It's understandable that he would want to contextualize (re: rationalize) the cruelty and downright evil some of his friends engaged in (since they were his friends, after all), but I'm not sure if the 80s Ivan Boesky-inspired "Greed is Good" mantra or invocation of the ultimate boogeyman in progressive demonology (Ronald "Great Satan" Reagan) can explain why a young man would bore a red hot toaster's coil element into another man's ear to get him to give up the loot.
These are minor missteps in my opinion, and do nothing to really offset one of the most insightful and well-written pieces of fieldwork I've encountered. You know you've done something right when your sociological publication reads like a gripping novel, and yet never once condescends to being exploitative or stops searching for explanations and divulging new insights as the story unfolds and the lives of these sad men unravel. Highest recommendation.
What it really is, however, is the story of a young Dominican man who grew up in the South Bronx when (to paraphrase the comedian Joey Diaz), the South Bronx was a bad, bad, baaad, neighborhood. Randol Contreras lived through the tail end of the East Coast crack boom, where it was possible for an 8th grader to make a hundred thousand dollars in a couple days, or for that same child to seal his fate in a hail of bullets in matter of moments. Mr. Contreras even quotes Charles Dickens' famous lines about "the best of times, the worst of times" to describe the crack era, which from the outside looking in seems insane (for the vast majority of America, it was only the worst of times).
The author, however, is not an outsider, but a privileged insider whose friendship going back to childhood with various drug dealers allows him access to the world of the South Bronx underworld that it would have been impossible for most other researchers to get.
Upon returning to his stomping grounds, Contreras links up with old friends, and discovers that in a world where the crack market has tanked, young and ambitious men who dream of riches have taken to torturing mid-level drug dealers in order to get five- and sometimes even six-figure hauls of drugs, money, and jewelry. "Eliminating the middle man" is a common tactic for savvy businessmen, only in this milieu the old truism is taken to nigh-literal extremes (although murder is frowned upon, little things like ears and anal virginity do get eliminated when dealers prove recalcitrant during interrogations).
The book is at its best- and it is one of the best I've read this year- when Mr. Contreras allows his subjects to speak for themselves, unvarnished and unveiled, full of bravado in public as they smoke blunts and drink malt liquor, nervous wrecks racked by pangs of conscience in private, crying and questioning the meaning of the universe in cramped South Bronx apartments during the long nights when they contemplate the damage they've done to the lives of those around them and themselves.
As for the theory the author musters, when it's his alone, or when it's a synthesis of something he learned in school applied to the streets where he grew up, Randol Contreras demonstrates uncommon insight and novel ways of thinking. At other times, he sounds as if he's reading from the same tired homilies as any strident undergrad in a 101 course. It's understandable that he would want to contextualize (re: rationalize) the cruelty and downright evil some of his friends engaged in (since they were his friends, after all), but I'm not sure if the 80s Ivan Boesky-inspired "Greed is Good" mantra or invocation of the ultimate boogeyman in progressive demonology (Ronald "Great Satan" Reagan) can explain why a young man would bore a red hot toaster's coil element into another man's ear to get him to give up the loot.
These are minor missteps in my opinion, and do nothing to really offset one of the most insightful and well-written pieces of fieldwork I've encountered. You know you've done something right when your sociological publication reads like a gripping novel, and yet never once condescends to being exploitative or stops searching for explanations and divulging new insights as the story unfolds and the lives of these sad men unravel. Highest recommendation.
October 10, 2018
Read this for class; not really the most interesting topic to me as I'm more of a violent crime gal, but got me interested in the aspect of criminal justice research nonetheless.
July 11, 2021
And easy read for an ethnography, extremely brutal violence in this book so be aware of that. Personally have issues with the author's grey area of ethics by studying his childhood friends.
September 29, 2021
3/5 - SOC 4106
September 21, 2022
Read
1-71
105-175
191-242
for an educational/college required book, it was alright.
1-71
105-175
191-242
for an educational/college required book, it was alright.
September 4, 2024
Beautifully written ethnography! Would read again!
December 14, 2024
DNF only because I read select chapters (preface through chapter 5; conclusion) for my juvenile delinquency class. A great book! Would've loved to read the rest, just don't have time rn
February 20, 2025
Thought this was really good, read for SOC222
Want to read
September 25, 2014good
Read
July 29, 2020Read for Crime on TV - 4.5
Read
November 1, 2017Skipped a chapter, plus third small section of book but am counted this as read. Quick and easy to digest and provided an interesting account as to how a group of men were lead to commit such stickups through resources available to them.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews