Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

• Genre: Nonfiction; memoir
• Originally Published: 2009
• Reading Level/Interest: College/adult
• Structure/Length: 9 chapters plus an introduction; approx. 240 pages; approx. 7 hours, 30 minutes on audio
• Central Concern: The author, a Jesuit priest, recounts his experiences as the minister in a Los Angeles parish where gang violence was destroying the community. After talking to gang members and learning that most of them simply wanted a job, he founded the nonprofit Homeboy Industries to help them put their lives on a new track.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Gang violence; poverty; abuse

Gregory Boyle, Author

• Bio: Born in 1954 in Los Angeles, California; was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1984; spent a year doing mission work and learning to speak Spanish in Bolivia; became minister at Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles in 1986; began a program in 1988 to help young people find jobs that evolved into Homeboy Industries; has received the California Peace Prize and was named Humanitarian of the Year by the James Beard Foundation (2016), among many other awards
• Other Works: Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (2017); The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness (2021); Forgive Everyone Everything (2022); The Homeboy Way: A Radical Approach to Business and Life (2022)
• Awards: Publishers Weekly Best Book (2010)