Description
Book SynopsisStreet-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.
Table of ContentsList of Figures; Preface; Introduction; 1. To Drink of Death: Tukup’s Head-Hunter Autobiography and the Characteristics of Tribal-Warrior Autobiography; 2. The Kinds of Street-Gang Autobiography; 3. The Bubble Reputation: Honor, Glory and Status among the Warriors; 4. Glory Manifest: Coup Tales, Warrior Boasts and Gangsta Rap; 5. Brutal Honesty; 6. The Education of the Warrior; 7. The Warrior Choice; 8. Mona Ruiz’s ‘Two Badges’: Women Warriors and Warriors’ Women; 9. Sam Blowsnake and the Unfortunate Pottawatomie; 10. The Gangbanger Autobiography of Monster Kody (AKA Sanyika Shakur); 11. Battle, Raid and Stratagem; 12. Berserkers and the Tragedy of Warrior Individualism; Appendix A On Circumcision; Appendix B A List of the Tribal Peoples and Street Gangs Mentioned in This Book; Annotated Bibliography of Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies; Bibliography of Works Cited; Index.
