The shocking, seminal memoir of a key member of L.A. gang the Crips, first published in 1990.

I propose to open my mind as wide as possible to allow my readers the first ever glimpse at South Central from my side of the gun, street, fence and wall.

After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of rival gang members, twelve-year-old Kody Scott was initiated into the L.A. gang the Crips. He quickly matured into one of the most formidable Crip combat soldiers, earning the name ''Monster'' for committing acts of brutality and violence that repulsed even his fellow gang members. When the inevitable jail term confined him to a maximum-security cell, a complete political and personal transformation followed: from Monster to Sanyika Shakur, Black nationalist, member of the New Afrikan Independence Movement and crusader against the causes of gangsterism.

In a document that has been compared to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver''s Soul on Ice, Shakur makes palpable the despair and decay of America''s inner cities and gives eloquent voice to one aspect of the Black experience today.