A Dream Denied Incarceration, Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America [Hardcover]

Young minority men are often portrayed in popular media as victims of poverty and discrimination.A Dream Denied delves deeper, investigating the social and cultural implications of the “American dream” narrative for young minority men in the juvenile justice systems in Boston and Chicago. This book connects young male offenders’ cycles of desistance and recidivism with normative assumptions about success and failure in American society, exposing a tragic disconnect between structural reality and juvenile justice policy. This book challenges us to reconsider how American society relates to its most vulnerable members, how it responds to their personal failures, and how it promises them a better future.

Michaela Soyeris Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Hunter College. 

"Soyer situates her analysis of young men’s desistance efforts in a broader critique of the American myth of meritocracy. She skillfully weaves ethnographic data and social theory to show how the young men’s lives are shaped by their social circumstances, juvenile justice system involvement, and the cultural narratives that rationalize and enable their marginalization. A Dream Denied expands our understanding of the complicated process of desistance and how it is shaped by inequality."—Andrea Leverentz, Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston and author of The Ex-Prisoner’s Dilemma: How Women Negotiate Competing Narratives of Reentry and Desistance

"Too often research on troubled African American and Latino youth takes the perspective that they are incorrigible, unapologetic for their actions, or unaware of alternative ways of living.  InA Dream Denied, Michela Soyer dispels this narrow vision by exploring the complex views about opportunity and desire for inner-city teenagers in the juvenile justice syls9