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Book Review Of Monster By Sanyika Shakur

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Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member, by Sanyika Shakur
Leitisha Moreno
CJ315: Gangs in America, M7A1: Book Review
Instructor Rush
October 15, 2017

An Analysis of Monster

The book is Kody Scott’s (who is now going by the name Sanyika Shakur) memoir of his sixteen years as a gangster in Los Angeles, California. It became a best-seller and is published in about ten languages. In the book, the author narrates how he was initiated into a Los Angeles gang at the age of twelve and his eventual departure from this lifestyle. Scott joins a gang because of the growing number of gangs in his neighborhood and chooses to the gang lifestyle to assimilate into his ghetto environment. He rapidly rises to become a formidable Crips combat soldier, operating under the nickname “Monster” for his committal of brutal and violent acts; so violent that even his fellow gang members seemed repulsed by his actions. Over the years, Scott gets arrested and charged several times for different crimes such as murder and robbery but manages to escape. When he is arrested and jailed in a maximum prison for seven years, Scott reforms both personally and politically, changing his life. …show more content…

But what do you expect from someone with no formal education? With this in mind, Shakur’s story was seen as more realistic in my eyes. In comparing Shakur’s book with other criminal justice books I’ve read, Shakur’s book provides a first-person account. It shows his perception on how he became a Crip combat soldier who hunted other people to kill and/or maim, to becoming a member of the New Afrikan Independence Movement. Most other criminal justice books I’ve read usually contain statistical data or research facts, not so much the individual gang members personal account of their violent

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