How do girls who are involved with gangs or impacted by them manage to leave the gang and go on to other ways of being and acting in the world? This book details how the practices of storying their experiences give gang-involved and gang-impacted Latina girls and women a way to disinhabit the gang, to craft new identities that do not ignore or evade but include relevant parts of their old identity, and to help others to inhabit new identities. Transcending the gang, that is, being conscious of the gang’s influence and impact in their lives several years and even decades after leaving, is performed through storytelling.

The book takes the Communication Perspective to draw from an eclectic array of peacemaking approaches—from the UN Peacekeepers and Conflict Coaching to community centres and transcendent mediation—to envision how girls might thrive despite the presence of gangs in their neighbourhoods, schools, and lives. By focusing on the social construction of possibilities, the Story of Esperanza shows how girls can access the resources necessary—economic, social, political, community, cultural, interactional, and more importantly, storytelling—on their journey to transcend gangs and inhabit inter(in)dependence within more just social worlds.