The Culture and Politics of Contemporary Street Gang Memoirs

Conclusions: Still Running

179 CONCLUSIONS Still Running The relationship between violence and pedagogy is the central theme under scrutiny in this study of gang memoirs. The books incorporate aggressive imagery and are commercially profitable partly because of the gangsta propensity for violence. But these memoirs have demonstrated that gangsta violence is not their only appeal. The books are equally, if not more, concerned with themes of conversion. While the violent component centers on short-term gratuitous pleasure, the conversion is a pedagogical aspect that relates to discipline, forbearance, and long-term goals. The fundamental power of these memoirs lies in their compelling combination of violence and conversion. These two constituent elements run parallel and in many ways service one another. It is fascinating that the memoirists integrate both, foreseeing that violence alone would not capture nor satisfy audiences. Even Monster, arguably the most aggressive of the three narrators, attempts to rationalize his behavior and learn from his mistakes . The tension between violence and pedagogy is often reflected in the narrative conflict between young gangbanger and wiser, redeemed man. It is this very friction that renders contemporary street gang memoirs so intriguing. As chapter 6 revealed, the schoolchildren’s modes of engagement with the texts extended well beyond the violent episodes. The young people looked toward the ways the memoirists were acting in culturalist (humanist ) traditions, in which individual effort can shape history. They were captivated by the authors’ commitment to agency through acts of redemption and conversion, self-education, and writing. They were enthralled by the Conclusions 180 narrators’ abilities to shape their own lives, an achievement made even more powerful because they were rising from poverty. The all-important sense of authenticity in the texts stems from both the element of abjection and the angle of aspiration. This is ultimately illustrated by Rodriguez establishing a successful business and Williams a publishing house. Even though Shakur returned to prison, his brother keenly observed: “I’m thrilled [he] wrote that book and that it was a major success. Because it was the one moment in his life when he could say he had succeeded. A book, you have it for life. A book is knowledge.”1 Through emphasizing the conversion tract and their redeemed selves, the memoirists undermine well-worn structuralist stereotypes of criminal gang members and death row prisoners, an observation further demonstrated by the reader responses in LA schools. The typically American characteristics that pervade these memoirs help to explain their popularity. Writing in 1993, cultural historian Michael Kammen addressed some of the polarized views of American exceptionalism (both repudiating and reaffirming the concept) that had been brought to light in intellectual debates since the early 1970s.2 Over the past two decades, debates in American cultural studies have increasingly tended to de-emphasize notions of exceptionalism. By 2005 scholars like Shelley Fisher Fishkin were contending that transnational perspectives would eliminate attitudes of American intellectual, cultural, and political superiority.3 But these memoirs make a case for, at least partially, rehabilitating notions of exceptionalism. The tension and interdependence between violence and conversion in the memoirs is aptly captured by historian Richard Slotkin’s famed Regeneration through Violence.4 Like the colonial story explored by Slotkin, regeneration through violence is particularly American. This project in some ways offers a variation on Slotkin’s account. The classic American experience is preoccupied with the violence angle, but these gang memoirs are equally concerned with the story of rebirth and renewal. With regard to regeneration, this book has mapped notions of self-invention and empowerment in polyglot America. There is cultural opportunity in writing gang memoirs, insofar as they potentially provide upward mobility out of the ghetto. But just as there are possibilities, there are difficulties in maintaining that advancement, illustrated both within the memoirs and in some of the reception surrounding the publicity images of their authors. To rise from poverty to success is deeply American and gripping, as is regeneration through violence. These narratives, with their Conclusions 181 immigrant story/slave history as explicit and implicit back-stories, demonstrate the difficulties and opportunities of growing up in multicultural America. Thus the memoirs exude quintessentially American dimensions, capturing both the nightmare and the dream of America. Another focus of this book is to stress the politicized dimensions of the memoirs in historical contexts. These gang memoirs offer an extensive critique of the dominant culture...