Written in solitary confinement, Kody Scott's memoir of sixteen years as a gangbanger in Los Angeles was a searing
bestseller and became a classic, published in ten languages, with more than 300,000 copies in print in the United
States alone. 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 into one of the most formidable Crip
combat soldiers, earning the name "Monster" for committing acts of brutality and violence that repulsed
even his fellow gang members. When the inevitable jail term confined him to a maximum-security cell, a complete
political and personal transformation followed: from Monster to Sanyika Shakur, black nationalist, member of the
New Afrikan Independence Movement, and crusader against the causes of gangsterism. In a document that has been
compared to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, Shakur makes palpable the despair
and decay of America's inner cities and gives eloquent voice to one aspect of the black ghetto experience today.