Pigeon English - research notes

In a survey of at risk youngsters in south London 1/2 said they had seen a stabbing or a shooting in the last year.http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/frontline-london-day-1-the-gangs-of-london-8838696.html

“I had a lot of gang friends and we done a lot of things. I wish I hadn’t done half the things I done. We all been to prison. I been five times. I got out a few months ago.” Was he still in a gang? “I don’t call them a gang, I call them ‘my boys’, but other people might call us a gang. I need to leave my boys behind because I don’t plan on going back inside. But leaving the roads ain’t easy. Construction is my thing. I’m good with my hands, I can dig all day.”“I had a lot of gang friends and we done a lot of things. I wish I hadn’t done half the things I done. We all been to prison. I been five times. I got out a few months ago.”http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/frontline-london-these-young-gangsters-have-lost-so-many-friends-theyve-stopped-going-to-their-funerals-8838684.html

''We know through our brain imaging work that children exposed to sustained violence adapt in a similar way as soldiers exposed to combat, in that their brain function changes to be more attuned to threat.'' “The children in our study had twice the normal levels of anger, over three times the levels of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and almost four times higher levels of disassociation, which can lead to violent detached behaviour,”Prof Viding and Dr McGrorhttp://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/frontline-london-these-young-gangsters-have-lost-so-many-friends-theyve-stopped-going-to-their-funerals-8838684.html

De Niro, 21, interjected: “Sometimes you join a gang because of peer pressure. You get asked to do stuff. It’s called getting ‘jumped in’. You might be expected to rob or stab someone to prove loyalty to the gang.” The conversation became animated and as they shared and argued, they also began to open up. They talked about how prison held no fear for them, that “in the hood” going to prison was a “rite of passage”, much like a middle-class child thinks about university.http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/frontline-london-these-young-gangsters-have-lost-so-many-friends-theyve-stopped-going-to-their-funerals-8838684.html

There have been 123 teenage murders in London since 2007.http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/frontline-london-day-1-the-gangs-of-london-8838696.html

This is the video that we watched in class that was produced by Amnesty International to raise awareness of the fears and anxities of fleeing your home country to seek asylum.

This is a promotional video for the novel produced by the publisher when the book was launched

In this video Stephen Kelman talks about his background and how he came write the novel

This is the flag of Ghana. In the novel Harrison talks about the colour wheel he makes at school in which he used the colours red, yellow and green.

Click here to visit the webpage with the Ghana.profile on the right.

Ghana was the first place in sub-Saharan Africa where Europeans arrived to trade - first in gold, later in slaves.It was also the first black African nation in the region to achieve independence from a colonial power, in this instance Britain.

News articles about gang

Videos about gangs in London

About Stephen Kelman

Asylum issues

Ghana