Book Description
The corner of Truth Avenue and Pain Street is Valley City's butt crack part of town. Eight teenagers, the Gangsters & Retards, live there: Moon, a blind and deaf girl who practices aikido; Carlos, a Mexican-American rapper in a lowrider wheelchair; Bryan, a basketball loving boy with Down syndrome; Mad Girl, a pregnant fourteen-year-old Latina with major anger issues; Pho, a humongous Vietnamese skateboarder/tagger; Janice, a Jewish-American princess with leg braces and crutches; Dutch, a less than smart white boy wigger; and Learoy, a totally hot sixteen-year-old African-American girl. In this episode, convinced his failed attempts at breaking into the hip hop music scene are due to his Hispanic ethnicity, Carlos pretends he's black to catch a music label's attention. But when a record exec appears with a contract, Carlos obviously doesn't have the right skin color, and in the wink of an eye his falsified identity slips away from him. The absurd world of Valley City serves as the backdrop as Carlos plays a cat and mouse game to regain both his persona and the seven friends swept into the mess he creates. Cartoon realism misadventures ensue as this humorous novel of love, lies, power, corruption, and everyday existence makes you laugh and cry while possibly offending your sensibilities.
