Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member

(Paperback, Main)

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I propose to open my mind as wide as possible to allow my readers the first ever glimpse atSouth Central from my side of the gun, street, fence and wall.

After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of rival gang members,twelve-year-old Kody Scott was initiated into the L.A. gang the Crips. He quickly matured intoone of the most formidable Crip combat soldiers, earning the name 'Monster' for committingacts of brutality and violence that repulsed even his fellow gang members. When the inevitablejail term confined him to a maximum-security cell, a complete political and personaltransformation followed: from Monster to Sanyika Shakur, Black nationalist, member of theNew Afrikan Independence Movement and crusader against the causes of gangsterism.

In a document that has been compared to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and EldridgeCleaver's Soul on Ice, Shakur makes palpable the despair and decay of America's inner citiesand gives eloquent voice to one aspect of the Black experience today.

Reviews

'The story of one man's painful spiritual journey from violence toward transcendence . . .attests not only to Shakur's journalistic eye for observation, but also to his novelistic skillsas a storyteller, an ear for street language that is as perfectly pitched as Richard Price's, afeeling for character and status potentially as rich as Tom Wolfe's. This is a startling andgalvanic book.' - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

'Unquestionably one of the most disturbingly authentic triumphs of the human spiritever executed in print.' - Los Angeles Times

'[An] electrifying life story: an angry, stunningly violent odyssey through gang warfareand prison to redemption.' - Kirkus Reviews

'A compelling and frightening, bizarre, yet insightful insider's look at the society thatspawned gangs and the gang's violent retaliation within it.' - Quarterly Black Review of Books

Author Bio

Sanyika Shakur, aka Kody Scott, was born in 1963 and grew up in South Central LosAngeles. He was the author of Monster and T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. He died in June 2021.