The Dancing Gangsters of the South Bronx
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The Dancing Gangsters of the South Bronx is a compelling memoir of "growing up in the Bronx" during the 1960s and 1970s. The story weaves difficult coming of age Boricua memories in a South Bronx increasingly devastated by structural and individual racism, capital flight, heroin addiction, gang violence, arson, and housing deterioration, and urban renewal schemes with tactile recollections of the joy and community he was able to find in music and dance. Willie's analyses of the structural and individual factors that shaped his adolescence and young adulthood in the South Bronx are piercing, and his personal asides add complex layers to his reminiscences. Most importantly, Willie provides unique historical insight into a period of South Bronx culture that is often overlooked—the years immediately before the emergence of hip hop. Traditional narratives often give sole credit to early hip hop for ending, for a period of time, internecine gang warfare in the borough. Willie challenges this narrative by drawing attention to a slightly earlier moment when vibrant, multi-ethnic music and dance cultures flourished in the Bronx. It was, Willie convincingly insists, the relatively short-lived but nonetheless momentous dance jams at St. Mary's Recreation Center that first brought a moment of peace to the borough during the early 1970s. These dance jams were also instrumental in the evolution of the Latin Hustle, which before this point was a less developed set of dance steps practiced primarily by Boricua teens at house parties and in small basement clubs in the South Bronx.
Willie's memoir suggests that the dances at St. Mary's Recreation Center, organized primarily by teenage Boricuas, deserve a far more central place in the cultural history of The Bronx in the 1970s. Willie's narration of his dance, personal, and professional life after the St. Mary's jams is poignant and inspiring. Dancing Gangsters of the South Bronx is compelling memoir brimming with painful and exuberant memories, viewed from various angles, giving readers a palpable sense of what it was like to come of age struggling, laughing, fighting, dancing, and loving as a Boricua in the "burning" South Bronx.