Writing from solitary confinement, a former member of Los Angeles's notorious gang, The Crips, recounts his baptism by violence into the gang at age eleven and his evolution behind bars into a militant black nationalist. Reprint. 60,000 first printing. $60,000 ad/promo.

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

Biographies & Memoirs

Shakur, Sanyika

Regional U.S.

Penguin??Books

The follow up to his best-selling memoir Monster, Sanyika Shakur’s T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. is a vicious, heart-wrenching and true-to-life novel about an LA gang member that masterfully captures the violence and depravity of gang life. Shakur’s protagonist is Lapeace, the leader of the Eight Tray Crips gang in South Central Los Angeles. In a deadly gunfight with Anyhow, a Blood and Lapeace’s rival since childhood, eight innocent civilians are killed. Anyhow is captured. Lapeace becomes a fugitive and he must hide out in the home of his girlfriend, Tashima, a hip-hop mogul as a pair of crooked LA detectives, John Sweeney and Jesse Mendoza, attempt to track him down. This novel was written from the confines of Shakur’s jail cell, and the authenticity of its street scenes--the relentlessness of violence, the do-or-die attitude of each side of the gang war, the sheer joy in the killing--is a testament to the hell that has been a majority of Shakur’s life. With T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E., Shakur delivers a powerful and gripping story about the terror of gang life and one man’s attempt to free himself.

T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.

Literature & Fiction

United States

GROVE PRESS

Written in solitary confinement, Kody Scott’s memoir of sixteen years as a gangbanger in Los Angeles was a searing best-seller 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.

Community & Culture

The follow up to his best-selling memoir Monster, Sanyika Shakur’s T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. is a vicious, heart-wrenching and true-to-life novel about an LA gang member that masterfully captures the violence and depravity of gang life. Shakur’s protagonist is Lapeace, the leader of the Eight Tray Crips gang in South Central Los Angeles. In a deadly gunfight with Anyhow, a Blood and Lapeace’s rival since childhood, eight innocent civilians are killed. Anyhow is captured. Lapeace becomes a fugitive and he must hide out in the home of his girlfriend, Tashima, a hip-hop mogul as a pair of crooked LA detectives, John Sweeney and Jesse Mendoza, attempt to track him down. This novel was written from the confines of Shakur’s jail cell, and the authenticity of its street scenes—the relentlessness of violence, the do-or-die attitude of each side of the gang war, the sheer joy in the killing—is a testament to the hell that has been a majority of Shakur’s life. With T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E., Shakur delivers a powerful and gripping story about the terror of gang life and one man’s attempt to free himself.

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

One of L.A.'s most notorious gang leader takes readers inside the world of gang wars, recounting his ascension through the gang hierarchy, surviving attacks by rival gangs, and life in prison. 65,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo.

Scott, Kody

Atlantic Monthly Pr

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. The author's memoir of 16 years as a gang member in the Los Angeles Crips chronicles his brutal rise within the organization, as well as his subsequent jail term, and his political and personal transformation into an anti-gang crusader.

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

Turtleback Books

"It was over 20 years ago that the book Monster: The autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member exploded on the scene and gave us all a front row seat to explore the genocidal brutality of the neo-colonial world of gangbanging. A world that exists at the expense of New Afrikan communities and New Afrikan youth in particular, through our social savage way of attempting to gain power through AKs, bats and beat downs ... it was in the belly of the beast (prison) that 'Monster' underwent a revolutionary transformation, dissecting and re-building himself from the inside out, slaying the colonial thug Monster and emerging through a re-birth as 'Sanyika Shakur,' a New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist." - from the Foreword by Yusef "Bunchy" Shakur This collection of writings by Sanyika Shakur, formerly known as Monster Kody Scott, includes several essays written from within the infamous Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in the period around the historic 2011 California prisoners' hunger strike, as well as two interviews conducted just before and after his release in Black August 2012.  Shakur rejects the easy answers and false solutions of the neocolonial age - integration and racism, the colonial-criminal mentality and subservience to imperialism as the "oppo-sames" that they are. Firmly rooted in the New Afrikan Communist tradition, he skillfully uses the tools of dialectical materialism to lay bare the deeper connections between racism, sexism, and homophobia and how these mental diseases relate to the ongoing capitalist (neo-)colonial catastrophe we remain trapped within.  Defending the legacy of New Afrikans' historic struggle for Land, Independence, and Socialism, Shakur spells out a uniquely liberatory Revolutionary Nationalist vision. Annihilating the "amerikan" mental fog that has new generations continuing to self-defeat rather than coming together against the real enemy, Stand Up, Struggle Forward serves as a battle cry against all forms of oppression.  Stand Up, Struggle Forward also contains a valuable account of political repression in the California prison system, including several of the intelligence memoranda they were used to condemn Shakur to years of solitary confinement in Pelican Bay. These internal prison documents clearly show that this prolonged solitary confinement was a direct result of Shakur's continuing promotion of New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist politics. As such, they provide a clear example of the way in which solitary confinement continues to be used as a tool of political repression against thousands of prisoners in California today.

Stand up, Struggle Forward: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings on Nation, Class and Patriarchy

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Kersplebedeb Publishing

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Books by Shakur, Sanyika

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shakur, Sanyika. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

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

T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.

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

T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.

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

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

Stand up, Struggle Forward: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings on Nation, Class and Patriarchy