Barking to the Choir

The term “evil” is an oversimplified and inaccurate way to conceive of humans and the harm they inflict upon each other. Boyle works with convicted criminals and current and former gang members; Homeboy Industries is the largest gang intervention and reentry program in the world. He works with a population regularly, summarily, categorically, and systematically dismissed as a subhuman criminal people. Boyle’s steadfast insistence upon the inherent worth, full humanity, and boundless potential of the members of this population, whom he lovingly calls “homies,” heralds this theme. Throughout the text, Boyle invites his reader to see those within the Homeboy Industries community as full human beings. He pointedly contends most of the men and women with whom he works have endured trauma and pain beyond that which others who would so easily discard them have endured. Boyle asks his reader not to blindly dismiss the criminal acts these homies have perpetrated, but to see these acts within a context honoring their full humanity. Boyle believes that, once a reader has the compassion to view these men and women not as plainly evil but as fellow human beings struggling with issues such as poverty, trauma, and mental illness, then the idea of evil—divorced from human and circumstantial context—will no longer hold any sway. And the loving portraits of dozens of these men and women also reveal each of their unique and vibrant humanity. Together, these elements coalesce into an articulation of this theme.