As a boy, I would often come home with kids I had met hours prior, promising them food and fun at “my house.”
My mom would come to regard me as “always bringing home strays,” and despite her intervention to prevent me from fulfilling the promises I made to any one of my stranger friends by declaring, “No, they cannot hang out here today,” I would insist that they “wait for me outside” while I had my mom make me something to eat, then rush to reward them with half of my meal, and if they were to devour their portion before I consumed mine, I would offer the remainder.
I was the kid who would sneak you into my bedroom to sleep hidden under my bed so you would not have to risk going to your own home to be abused. Before becoming enthralled by gang life, I was a kind, adventurous, and compassionate kid. Somewhere along the way I became pulled into gang culture on the ruthless Los Angeles streets, where many have suffered in some form at the hands of gang violence. Over time I came to hold onto the notion and belief that “I don’t need a gang. The gang needs followers like me to exist and evolve.”
That belief became the attitude I mastered in order to repel gang involvement in prison long before I ever decided to use it as the title for my book, The Hell With a Gang. I have been in prison 23 years now, or since 2002. During that time I wrote my story and began creating what I call The Hell With a Gang Study Guide Edition, a comprehensive psychological study into the criminality of gang culture. The book is intended to create means by which those caring for at-risk youth may detect and deter vulnerabilities, but more so instill the attitude and behavior “to hell with a gang.” If my message reaches and maybe resonates with one young person, that would mean something to me, because writing is sacred.
