Hard Knocks
Memoir of a Small Moment
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2020
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Publisher's Description
Hard Knocks: Memoir of a Small Moment is the story of one man's dynamic journey through life from birth until the day after his twenty-first birthday. It takes place during the 1960s and 1970s on Long Island in New York. From a Latino background, he takes us through his cultural confusion, as his parents tried to assimilate within a predominantly white community, and his confrontation with overt racism at school. It details the abusive environment he faced in Catholic school, his growing anger, and his fall into childhood alcoholism and delinquency. The Vietnam War, counterculture, and science provide a constant background for his growing awareness, choices, decisions, and delusions about the world and his own life. His alcoholism merges with drug addiction and he finds value and identity within a gang. The momentum of his life, balancing precariously between rebellious destruction and a search for artistic beauty and truth, takes the reader through the criminal justice and mental health systems, where the narrator awakens to the truth of Christ in his life.
Endorsements (4)
“Ray Lopez’s Hard Knocks is a stunning memoir of the seemingly inevitable destruction of a confused young man. . . . On the surface he appears to be just another casualty of addiction, but dig deeper and you’ll find another narrative, one of faith and redemption.”
“Lopez writes in a sophisticated but vivid, plain style that calls attention to what’s going on in the world in which the author confronts hard knocks and gives some too. . . . Hard Knocks is a book of many pleasures. It is an affirmation of one’s life and one’s heritage.”
“Hard Knocks is a relevant story for today. Seeds of hate were sown in Ray’s young heart as he tried to navigate through a climate of racism and hate. Hard Knocks fully reveals the inner rage that took Ray to the precipice of self-destruction—prison and hospitalization. How does a man filled with rage, hate, and revenge become a man filled with love, especially for those caught in the same struggle?”
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