Tattoos on the Heart (Boyle)

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
Gregory Boyle, 2010
Simon & Schuster
217 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439153024


Summary 
How do you fight despair and learn to meet the world with a loving heart? How do you overcome shame? Stay faithful in spite of failure? No matter where people live or what their circumstances may be, everyone needs boundless, restorative love. Gorgeous and uplifting, Tattoos on the Heart amply demonstrates the impact unconditional love can have on your life.

As a pastor working in a neighborhood with the highest concentration of murderous gang activity in Los Angeles, Gregory Boyle created an organization to provide jobs, job training, and encouragement so that young people could work together and learn the mutual respect that comes from collaboration. Tattoos on the Heart is a breathtaking series of parables distilled from his twenty years in the barrio.

Arranged by theme and filled with sparkling humor and glowing generosity, these essays offer a stirring look at how full our lives could be if we could find the joy in loving others and in being loved unconditionally. From giant, tattooed Cesar, shopping at JCPenney fresh out of prison, we learn how to feel worthy of God’s love. From ten-year-old Lula we learn the importance of being known and acknowledged. From Pedro we understand the kind of patience necessary to rescue someone from the darkness. In each chapter we benefit from Boyle’s wonderful, hard-earned wisdom. Inspired by faith but applicable to anyone trying to be good, these personal, unflinching stories are full of surprising revelations and observations of the community in which Boyle works and of the many lives he has helped save.

Erudite, down-to-earth, and utterly heartening, these essays about universal kinship and redemption are moving examples of the power of unconditional love in difficult times and the importance of fighting despair. With Gregory Boyle’s guidance, we can recognize our own wounds in the broken lives and daunting struggles of the men and women in these parables and learn to find joy in all of the people around us. Tattoos on the Heart reminds us that no life is less valuable than another. (From the publisher.)

See our glossary of Spanish-to-English words.

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Author Bio 
• Birth—May 19, 1954 
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA 
• Education—B.A., Gonzaga University; M.A., Loyola
   Marymount University; M.Div., Western School of Theology;
   M.A., Jesuit School of Theology
• Awards—numerous humanitarian awards (below)
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California

Father Gregory Boyle was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1982. He received his Master of Divinity from the Weston School of Theology; and a Sacred Theology Masters degree from the Jesuit School of Theology. In 1988, Father Boyle began what would become Homeboy Industries, now located in downtown Los Angeles. Fr. Greg received the California Peace Prize, the “Humanitarian of the Year” Award from Bon Appetit; the Caring Institute’s 2007 Most Caring People Award; and received the 2008 Civic Medal of Honor from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

Since 1986, Father Gregory has been the pastor of Dolores Mission in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The church sits between two large public housing projects, Pico Gardens and Aliso Village, known for decades as the gang capital of the world. There are 1,100 gangs encompassing 86,000 members in Los Angeles, and Boyle Heights has the highest concentration of murderous gang activity in the city. Since Father Greg—also known affectionately as G-dog, started Homeboy Industries nearly twenty years ago, it has served members of more than half of the gangs in Los Angeles. In Homeboy Industries’ various businesses—baking, silkscreening, landscaping—gang affiliations are left outside as young people work together, side by side, learning the mutual respect that comes from building something together. (From the publisher.)

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Book Reviews 
Destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality.
Los Angeles Times

Incandescent, always hope-filled and often hilarious. Boyle somehow maintains an exuberant voice that celebrates the strength, compassion and humanity of people often demonized. He simply highlights charity and goodness wherever they are found. Boyle intersperses his narratives about gang members and his work with them with theological and spiritual reflections from a variety of theologians, poets and other writers. By introducing book-buying, highly educated readers to people we may never otherwise encounter, Boyle aspires to "broaden the parameters of our kinship."
Christian Century

Father Boyle reminds us all that every single child and youth is a part of God’s ‘jurisdiction’—and when they know that we are seeing them.
Marian Wright Edelman - Children's Defense Fund

In this artful, disquieting, yet surprisingly jubilant memoir, Jesuit priest Boyle recounts his two decades of working with “homies” in Los Angeles County, which contains 1,100 gangs with nearly 86,000 members. Boyle’s Homeboy Industries is the largest gang intervention program in the country, offering job training, tattoo removal, and employment to members of enemy gangs. Effectively straddling the debate regarding where the responsibility for urban violence lies, Boyle both recounts the despair of watching “the kids you love cooperate in their own demise” and levels the challenge to readers to “stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.” From moving vignettes about gangsters breaking into tears or finding themselves worthy of love and affirmation, to moments of spiritual reflection and sidesplittingly funny banter between him and the homies, Boyle creates a convincing and even joyful treatise on the sacredness of every life. Considering that he has buried more than 150 young people from gang-related violence, the joyful tenor of the book remains an astounding literary and spiritual feat.
Publishers Weekly 

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Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Tattoos on the Heart:

1. Begin with a discussion of the book's title: "Tattoos on the Heart." What does it mean...or refer to? And what is the purpose of tattoo removal?

2. How would you define, or describe, the central lesson that Father Boyle passes on—both to the young men in gangs...and to us, his readers?

3. How do inadequacy and shame function as barriers to giving and receiving love?

3. Does Father Boyle's approach to gang violence offer a realistic solution to a nationwide epidemic of poverty-violence-despair? Can it be (has it been) replicated in other areas, other cities? Or is his project too idealistic to work on a national scale? What do you think?

4. Talk about the book's individual stories: which are your favorites...which ones made you want to weep? Which made you laugh? Do you have a favorite?

5. What has made Boyle so successful in reaching the gang members? Is it his message...or is it his personal charisma...or what?

6. Discuss the role of faith in the men's transformation? Talk also about Boyle's inclusive philosophy—drawing on the wisdom of diverse faiths, as well as on history, philosophy, poetry.

7. How does Boyle interpret the Biblical parable about the paralyzed man being lowered through the roof of the house? Boyle agrees that the story is about the hearling power of Jesus. But he also sees "something more significant happening. They're ripping the roof off the place, and those outside are being let in." In what way does the parable apply to the work of Homeboys?

8. What does this sentence mean—"We are all trying to learn how to bear the beams of love"?

9. In what way were you changed by this book? What surprised you most...moved you...angered you? What did you learn by reading Tattoos on the Heart?

10. Boyle challenges readers to "stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it." Is he successful in challenging you?

See our glossary of Spanish-to-English words.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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