Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies

‘Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies’ describes the similarities between the autobiographies of warrior tribes and of street gangs. Gangbangers were so alienated from the larger society that they reinvented something very similar to tribal-warrior cultures right in the heart of American cities.

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Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies is a study of the autobiographies of tribal-warrior cultures in North America, the Amazon, the Orinoco Basin, the highlands of Luzon, the island of Alor — of headhunters, women, Apaches, New Guinea big men and a Yanomami captive. The book also discusses tribal-warrior autobiographies closer to home: Colton Simpson’s Inside the Crips, Mona Ruiz’s Two Badges, Nathan McCall’s Makes Me Wanna Holler and Sanyika Shakur’s Monster, autobiographies that remember gangbanging at a time when there were close to 500 gang-related homicides a year in Los Angeles—a time when gangbangers were so alienated from the larger society that they reinvented something very similar to the tribal-warrior cultures right in the asphalt heart of American cities. Grisly, probing and resonant with the voices of generations of fighters, Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies is an unsettling work of cross-disciplinary scholarship.