This book is for you, written especially for you. I hope that my experiences will help you understand the truth about gang life. I hope you will be able to find a way to live your life that will bring you peace and success. I know from personal experience that living a life of violence will only bring you unhappiness and maybe worse, the end of a friend's life or your own. I'd like to be your friend.
I was born and raised in inner city North/Northeast Portland, Oregon. Because there was so much drinking and drug use in our home, my dad thought he could better himself and his family if he left. He didn't go far away, living in the same neighborhood; sometimes it feels to me like he never left. I was his first girl and only girl for a long time, although when I was five, my mom gave birth to a little girl names Tiesha, who died from crib death when she was six months old.
When my dad left, the family was made up of my mom, my five year old brother Terrance, whom we've always called Slim and me; but my mom was pregnant with my little brother Sir Lawson, nicknamed Boomer, born six months later. While my mom was a single parent, I never downgraded her or blamed her for our being raised without our real daddy. I stayed by her side no matter what. I often talked to my dad over the phone and sometimes stayed nights with him and his new family. I love my stepmother. She never tried to keep me from seeing my dad and always wanted me over for visits. I now have two stepsisters. I love them the way I would a full sister.
Nonetheless, when I turned 13, I felt alone. My mom was always working and I didn't have my dad when I wanted him because he lived with his other family. I wandered off to find a family in the streets. Before long, I was selling marijuana. I never told my mom where the money came from when she would find a bundle of money under my pillow or the mattress. At that age I never worried about the consequences.
My best friend Tinker and I were very popular in Portsmouth Middle School and again when I reached high school, but then it was in a very negative way. On my sixteenth birthday, my auntie threw me a big "Swett 16" party. I invited all my friends. That memorable night marked the beginning of my gang involvement and changed my life forever.
The stories in this book are all true and each one has placed a scar on my spirit that is still painful to tough, I thank God, my grandmother, and my mother that I am alive and able to write these stories. I hope you can learn something from them.

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• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 173 Pages
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