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Michaela Soyer, A Dream Denied: Incarceration, Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorJerry Flores
Published date01 January 2019
Date01 January 2019
DOI10.1177/1462474517721191
Subject MatterBook reviews
untitled Book reviews
129
Michaela Soyer, A Dream Denied: Incarceration, Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America,
University of California Press: Oakland, CA, 2016; 184 pp. (including index): 978-0520290457,
$34.95 (pbk), $76 (cloth)
A Dream Denied provides an on-the-ground look into the experiences of 23 young
Black and Latino men in Boston and Chicago’s juvenile justice systems. The book’s
author draws the reader into the text by providing a nuanced understanding of
criminal of‌fending, desistance, and the social-psychological factors that inf‌luence
these behaviors. By juxtaposing what the author calls ‘‘automatic desistance’’
versus ‘‘creative desistance,’’ Michaela Soyer problematizes hegemonic understand-
ings of how racialized youth negotiate ‘‘leaving a life of crime’’ while also high-
lighting what desistance looks like across time, place, and space. Soyer’s work is
illustrative of what many other scholars have already shown—the juvenile justice
system serves as an institution that doles out punishment—but falls short of pro-
viding support for the young people it incarcerates. However, by centering the
social and cultural implications of the ‘‘American Dream’’ and how this social
construction af‌fects young racialized men, Soyer places the promise of the
‘‘American Dream’’ in dynamic tension with how racialized young men internalize
the myth of American meritocracy. As a result, we get unique insight into the
internal conf‌licts of these young Black and Latino men wanting to rise to societal
expectations of ‘‘success.’’ When most of them fail to meet these expectations, they
are left to believe that their failures are indeed a result of their own individual
choices, a dynamic that ef‌fectively obfuscates the structural and symbolic condi-
tions that set these young men up to fail in the f‌irst place. Soyer complicates
readers’ understandings of these issues by showing how the skills youth learn in
detention facilities and group homes do not translate to negotiating life in the
community....

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