Summary:
Nathan McCall was a smart kid growing up in a close, protective family in a black working-class neighbourhood. Yet by age of fifteen, McCall was packing a guy and embarking on a criminal career that five years later would land him in prison for armed robbery.
In this blistering memoir, McCall chronicles his passage from the street to the prison yard - and, ultimately, to the newsrooms of the Washington Post, where he is now a respected journalist.
Angry, eloquent, and powerful... a relentlessly honest book filled with pain, triumph, rage and humor, high and low.
-Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review:
I decided to re-write the summary from the back of the book, but the review comes straight from myself.
The book was recommended to me by one of the TR members - by danigantt. And really, HUGE thanks to her. Since the first page I got hooked and I knew it's going to be a great book. It starts with a short chapter 1 'Get Back' where McCall tells a story about him and his fellas beating up a white kid and feeling good about it. It made me stop reading and think how much he must have hated whites back in 60's to beat up a random kid for riding a bike in the neighbourhood. 100 pages beyond, he's runing a train on a girl he used to know. Next xxx pages and he's running around with gun and facing imprisonment.
As the LA Times Book Review already stated, the book's full of anger, pain and rage, but at the same time, it gives you hope that if you really want something, you can achieve it.
It's amazing story, from zero to a hero, from a neighbourhood in Portsmouth to prison and turning to a Muslim, from prison to university, from university to Washington Post and fulfilling his dreams.
Great story, great read, great motivational example for all those who think that they failed in life.
I loved the last paragraph, and I think I can quote it, since you already know how it ends.
I was frightened by these younger guys, who now controlled my former turf. I eased back to my car and left, because I knew this: that if they saw the world as I once did, they believed they had nothing to lose, including life itself.
It made me wanna holler and throw up both my hands.
It's a great topic for a further debate or even having a little reflection yourself, how young people waste their life without ever giving it a thought, how they think that guns give them right to decide about one's death and how fucked up it is when you think you have nothing to lose and that by choosing a right way you can change everything.
