Summary Of Monster: The Autobiography Of An L. A. Gang Member

Sanyika Shakur tells his life story in detail in his book, Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member. He tells how he lived from a very young age and survived the gang life in South Central L.A. during the 1960’s and 1970’s, which was during the startup of the Crips. He was born Kody Scott and he was born into a very poor family. He had an absent father and was therefore raised by a single mother. At the very young age of eleven Kody Scott turned his life over to the Crips. The Crips are a gang that is predominantly African American and the group is known to be one of the largest and most violent gangs in the United States. What enticed him to the Crips was the respect and glory that bangers received and the unity of the Crip set.

Kody Scott had no emotional ties because of the stereotypical broken home he grew up in. His loyalty was to the streets and abiding by the Crip Code. This caused him to treat this lifestyle as a full time job. He was committed to making a name for himself and maintaining ‘street cred’, which meant that he had to get rid of anyone or anything that stood in his and his pack’s way. His mind was under so much manipulation that he felt that his participation in the gang was his only way survival. After the transition to a revolutionist/activist, Shakur began to realize that there were more important things at risk so he began to live in accordance to the socially accepted norm. The fortification of the gang residential area availed Sanyika to transform, slowly over time. “I had faced the realization of who would ultimately be betrayed if I did not stop, which put banging in its proper perspective. While it did and still does supply wayward youth with an idea of collective being and responsibility, in the end it wrecks the lives of its participants and the innocents who live anywhere near it’s “silo,” another word for the base of operations. It is, unfortunately, the extreme expression of hopelessness in New Afrikan communities: misdirected rage in the form of retarded resistance. To continue banging would be a betrayal first of my children, who now depend on me for guidance or morals could

Albert Francis Charles Augustus Emmanuel Cohen presented the theory of gang constitution that used Merton’s strain theory as a basis for why individuals resort to such group behavior. There are five adaptions to strain and of the five Sanyika was proximately cognate to the adaptation of revolt, which is the most complex of the five adaptations. Strain is considered the primary source for the development of criminals. According to Cohen, delinquent youths begin to value destruction of property and skipping school, not because these behaviors lead to a payoff or success in the conventional world, but simply because they defy the conventional norms and laws as good, thereby psychologically and physically rejecting the cultural system that has been imposed on them without preparation and fair distribution of resources. (Tibbets, p. 116) Rebels are put into the idea of societal goals and means, but they do not buy into the idea those currently in place. Most rebels are criminals by definition, largely because they are trying to overthrow the current societal structure. (Tibbetts, p.