Content area
Full Text
Monster: The autobiography of an L.A. gang member.
BY CHILL
Showtime Contributing Writer
Unbelievable, incredible! ... Monster is quite possibly the most incredible documentation of L.A. gang life ever written, for sure the most graphically awesome autobiography of its kind. Somewhere within the deep dark recesses of the helter skelter existence of Crips and Bloods, "O.G.'s" and "Ghetto Stars," there are perhaps many such extraordinary tales of urban violence and mayhem, but when you add the word "Autobiography" to the scenario, it implies that the person telling his or her story had to at least have been alive at the conclusion of its tale, and there lies the rub. You see, the simple fact that the author of this story lived to even tell the tale is perhaps the most incredible part of all.
This book could have very easily concluded with the death of its author several times within the conclusion of each and every chapter. "Autobiography" is much too stable a literary term to describe the process endured for the telling of this story. The transformation of Kody Scott to Monster and finally to Sanyika Shakur, makes the autobiographical illegalities of Malcolm X's delivery from "Detroit Red" to El Haji Malik El Shabazz look like a lightweight skirmish at a church softball game. If Malcolm X, while in prison, was once described as "Satan" then "Monster Kody"...