Hindsight: Coming of age on the streets of Hollywood

by Sheryl L Recinos

Overview

Hindsight: Coming of age on the streets of Hollywood is a gripping memoir of the teenage years of Sheryl Recinos, MD. She reflects on the journey that changed her life when she was a teen in her debut book. She chronicles her dysfunctional upbringing that led her through foster care, detention, and eventually to the streets of Hollywood.

Hindsight gives Sheryl’s personal account of the dangers of teen homelessness and shows how she struggles to complete high school and find work while living on the streets and in shelters. The book reveals the dangerous obstacles that she encountered during her journey, including the murder of a friend and the constant dangers of predators seeking to harm youth on the streets. Her story culminates with her harrowing tale of being a homeless pregnant teen and illustrates how she found hope and made it off the streets.

After Sheryl Recinos, MD, overcomes homelessness, she later finds success as a physician and continues to give back to the community that saved her.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732850002
Publisher:	Sheryl Recinos
Publication date:	10/30/2018
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.87(d)

About the Author

Sheryl Recinos is a mother of 3, wife, and family medicine physician living in Los Angeles, California. She holds a BA in Sociology from UCLA, a BS in Cell and Molecular Biology, a Master's in Education from California State University, Northridge, and obtained her medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine. She currently works as a hospitalist. She is happily married to Byron Recinos.

When she isn't writing or taking care of patients, she can be found hanging out with her family or volunteering. She regularly travels to Mexico with the UC Irvine branch of Flying Samaritans to volunteer in their free clinic in Testerazo. She has also travelled to the Caribbean for hurricane relief and community building.

She also works closely with My Friend's Place in Hollywood, and recently started the Impact Scholarship at their program to help youths who are transitioning off of the streets and enroll in college.

Her website can be found at: www.sherylrecinosmd.com.

Roxana Recinos is a debut artist, currently studying towards her degree in animation. She uses the pseudonym Rixael for her online artwork.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Before We Fell Apart

Chapter 2: Broken Home

Chapter 3: Dads Don't Get Custody

Chapter 4: Married Again

Chapter 5: Hospital

Chapter 6: Like It Never Happened

Chapter 7: Donnie

Chapter 8: The First Escape

Chapter 9: Running Again

Chapter 10: As Far Away As Possible

Chapter 11: California

Chapter 12: 601

Chapter 13: Foster Care

Chapter 14: Gone Again

Chapter 15: Last Chance

Chapter 16: C.A. DIllon

Chapter 17: Freedom in Spades

Chapter 18: Self Defense

Chapter 19: Reggie

Chapter 20: Good Behavior

Chapter 21: Conditional Release

Chapter 22: Running

Chapter 23: Las Vegas

Chapter 24: Riot

Chapter 25: Guilty

Chapter 26: Failed Attempt

Chapter 27: New Beginnings

Chapter 28: Falling

Chapter 29: 72 Hours

Chapter 30: White Van

Chapter 31: Escape

Chapter 32: Miami

Chapter 33: Charlotte

Chapter 34: David's House

Chapter 35: Back to California

Chapter 36: The First Night

Chapter 37: Back on the Streets

Chapter 38: Their First Night

Chapter 39: Outside

Chapter 40: Pantages

Chapter 41: LAYN

Chapter 42: Emma

Chapter 43: Seventeen

Chapter 44: Spanging

Chapter 45: Kicked Out

Chapter 46: Alone

Chapter 47: AEWC

Chapter 48: Santa Monica

Chapter 49: Pepper Spray

Chapter 50: Sam

Chapter 51: Hired

Chapter 52: Back to the Beach

Chapter 53: 86'ed

Chapter 54: Traveling

Chapter 55: David's, Again

Chapter 56: Going Home

Chapter 57: Red

Chapter 58: Elijah

Chapter 59: A.A.

Chapter 60: Apology

Chapter 61: Ava and Emma

Chapter 62: Shelter

Chapter 63: Ava

Chapter 64: Grief

Chapter 65: Box Office

Chapter 66: Ground Zero

Chapter 67: Damian

Chapter 68: Halloween

Chapter 69: Expecting

Chapter 70: Jerry Springer

Chapter 71: Pregnant Hitchhiker

Chapter 72: Making Amends

Chapter 73: Back Again

Chapter 74: Children of the Night

Chapter 75: Rock Bottom

Chapter 76: Diploma

Chapter 77: Citywalk

Chapter 78: DAPY Girl

Chapter 79: Burger Factory

Chapter 80: Byron

Chapter 81: Last Night as a Kid

Chapter 82: Eighteen

Chapter 83: Melinda

Chapter 84: Covenant House

Chapter 85: First Apartment

Chapter 86: College

Chapter 87: Pregnant, Again

Chapter 88: Back in the Shelter

Chapter 89: Nowhere to Go

Chapter 90: Mario

Chapter 91: Maternity Home

Chapter 92: My Friend's Place

Chapter 93: Michelle

Chapter 94: Baby Shower

Chapter 95: Surprise

Chapter 96: Accident

Chapter 97: Induced

Chapter 98: Roxana

Chapter 99: Second Chance

Chapter 100: New Beginnings

Editorial Reviews

2019-07-19
A writer recounts her experiences of adolescent homelessness in this coming-of-age memoir.

At the age of 5, Recinos (Haiku, 2019, etc.) already knew she wanted new parents. Her father's frequent rages and her mother's erratic behavior stemming from bipolar disorder had already driven three of her older siblings from the house. When she was 8, her mother took her and her remaining brother to a trailer to hide out from their father. A few weeks later, after the heater broke, her mother left the two children alone on the side of a mountain road. Her parents divorced; her mother was in and out of hospitals; and her father soon remarried. Her father had the author hospitalized at 11, where she met other troubled youth in group therapy: "I'd quizzed the older kids on foster care, group homes, running away. I was learning about alcohol, marijuana, and harder drugs. I didn't want to try drugs, but alcohol sounded like it might be a nice change from feeling trapped. I wanted to feel free." As her life became increasingly unbearable, Recinos began routinely running away from home. At 13, while hitchhiking to California, she was raped by an ex-convict. She was soon placed in the care of the state, bouncing between juvenile detention, foster parents, and group residences before becoming homeless at 16. Drifting across the country and developing a drinking problem, she befriended other girls with similar lives and backgrounds as her own, one of whom was later brutally murdered by her boyfriend. At 17, the author found herself pregnant with few options. She needed to figure out a way to get sober and off the street, if not for her, then for her unborn child.

Recinos' prose is haunting and oftentimes surreal, as in this account of her pet rat and an attempted rape by a truck driver: "I woke up in the early morning hours to find the truck driver trying to unbutton my pants. My eyes flew open, and my knee kicked him hard in the groin. My rat was standing up on top of me, staring at him. He mumbled those unforgettable words; ‘I was going to rape you, but then I saw your rat.' " The volume gives a highly detailed picture of the experience of homelessness among teenage girls in all its horrid complexities. It also demonstrates the ways that youthful traumas, when unaddressed, can fester and cause increasingly severe problems as children age. The author's portraits of her family, friends, and the many people she met along the way are rich and often heart-rending, as is the frankness with which she discusses their misfortunes. It's a long book (over 370 pages), but it is never boring, and readers will leave it feeling that they have lived every year right along with Recinos. The fact that her story has a surprisingly happy ending (as the initials "MD" after her name on the memoir's cover attest) does little to blunt the sting that this gritty narrative of homelessness and young womanhood leaves in its wake.

A perceptive and moving account of growing up fast in harsh conditions.

Kirkus Reviews