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Writer Scrivner Love: "Lola did what men do. She started a war"
Photo: Becca Murray / Suhrkamp
Melissa Scrivner Love begins her novel "Capitana" with a show of force: Marcos, die-hard lieutenant of the Crenshaw Six, an up-and-coming Latino gang in South Central, Los Angeles, lets the other gang members beat him up and down.
Without fighting back, without complaining, without oaths of revenge.
This action may not be an exceptional punishment for misconduct in gang circles.
But anything but ordinary is that it was ordered by a woman.
A small, wiry woman in her twenties in cargo pants and a ribbed armpit shirt.
Her name is Lola Vasquez, she is a single mother and the leader of the Crenshaw Six.
And pretty ruthless when it comes to reaching their goal of becoming a
big player
in the California drug business.
The story of the rise of a little crook to the boss of a gang has been told many times in the cinema and in literature.
But perhaps never like Melissa Scrivner Love did, never from the point of view of a Latina who, in her criminal career, has to face the adversities of society as a whole - keyword structural racism - as well as the prejudices in her community, in which women usually do little have to decide.
She plays the benefactress for her community
Lola is kind of a feminine answer to Scarface, Al Capone and all the other tough guys from simple backgrounds who wanted to get to the top very quickly - and when they got there they realized that it's not only lonely at the top, but also damn dangerous.
It was invented by the US author Melissa Scrivner Love, who has so far mainly written for television, including the successful high-tech thriller series "Person of Interest".
Scrivner Love's debut novel "Lola" was released in 2017 in the USA, two years later in Germany, with "Capitana" the sequel is now available - and that in a very good translation.
In the previous volume "Lola", Scrivner Love told of the rise of her heroine, who had determined what was going on at the Crenshaw Six for a long time, but who for a long time did not dare to do so openly.
But when it came to first defending and then expanding the gang's territory, it stepped forward.
In the end, Lola had eliminated the competition and forged a lucrative alliance with a corrupt prosecutor - but also let her brother go to jail for a murder she had committed herself.
Two years have passed since then, a time when Lola demonstrated her leadership skills and cemented her power.
Inside the gang and inside the competitive drug market in Los Angeles.
Apparently, calm has returned to Lola's life, she lovingly takes care of her adopted daughter Lucy, even for her own mother, who let Lola be abused by men when she was a child to finance her drug addiction, her door is open.
And - like every clever criminal - she plays the benefactress for her community.
A war - but why?
The gangster life can hardly be more idyllic than at the beginning of "Capitana", but of course the peace does not last.
Lola wants to help a pregnant woman whose brutal husband is about to get out of prison.
The woman is afraid for her life, Lola promises to have the man killed.
Her brother does the job quickly - only it turns out the whole thing was a trap: "Lola understands. She killed a man named Paulo Cortes, one of the founders of the Rivera cartel. Lola did what men do. She did started a war. She just doesn't know why. "
When you say "why?"
can answer, Lola believes, she can still prevent the war.
The gangleader becomes a detective; during her investigations, certainties turn out to be chimeras, and allies as enemies.
And Lola has to prove again and again how tough she is.
But with every violent confrontation, the flexibility of their morals is also tested further.
With all the action that "Capitana" lives from: The really exciting question is whether her heroine will be completely corrupted in the end - or at least still have a spark of honor.
So far "only Latinos who kill Latinos"
The novel can be read as an implicit criticism of a corrupt system that offers many people no other way out than a criminal career, a system that produces people like Lola, who have long since ceased to realize whether it makes a difference whether they are for work at a bank, a high-tech company or a drug cartel.
Or is Lola simply a career criminal whose supposed scruples and good deeds ultimately only camouflage a lack of conscience?
This question is a constant resonance in "Capitana", and it sets the novel apart from most stories about male gangsters that Scrivner Love intelligently turns on the left.
In doing so, she repeatedly shows a refreshingly evil sense of humor: After Lola gets into a shootout that the police would normally ignore because it was "only Latinos who kill Latinos", the wind has turned against current allegations of racism the police meanwhile turned down, a detective investigates intensively: "Basically Lola has nothing against this kind of police work, even if she would prefer the new anti-racism not to blow her face."
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