In 1993, a new trend of memoirs began to emerge in the United States, exploring contemporary street gang life in the ghettos and barrios. The first memoirs in this cycle form the subject of this paper: Sanyika Shakur's Monster and Luis Rodriguez's Always Running. There have been polarised debates about such texts which have been variously demonised as violent and sensationalist or, by contrast, praised as offering a pedagogic and preventative anti-gang stance. Such contradictory responses are reflected in the memoirs themselves, emphasising the frisson of violent gang exploits and the sober, salutary reflection of politicised and educated hindsight. The memoirs developed an extensive life in the media, becoming a site for channeling charged discussions about youth, crime, race, and violence, opening up a series of discourses about black/Mexican masculinity, censorship, celebrity, and cultural commerce. This paper seeks to understand how these popular narratives, with their charged themes and topical content, came to be interpreted by commentators.
1. IntroductionBy the late 1980s, while thousands of former gang members were either dead or incarcerated, their legacy and the gang subculture was being celebrated and commodified through gangsta rap music and videos, film and fashion. In the early 1990s this lucrative cultural trend sparked interest from potential authors and publishers. Such literary attention was partially fuelled by a public fascination with life in the ghettos following the 1992 Los Angeles (LA) riots, resulting in a ne..
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