Excerpts
from Tookie's Memoir
Blue Rage, Black Redemption
Tookie's
birth. . .
On December 29, 1953, in New Orleans Charity Hospital,
I entered the world kicking and screaming in a caesarean
ritual of blood and scalpels. Because this was 1950s,
pre-Civil-Rights Louisiana, my 17-year-old mother, a "colored
woman," was deprived of anesthetics as her torso was slit
from sternum to pubic bone. Over and over again, she sang
the Christmas carol Silent Night to distract her
from the pain.
I
was christened Stanley Tookie Williams III, but mostly
referred to as Tookie.
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Thus
begins an extraordinary, unconventional American
success story. Stanley "Tookie" Williams
- a former youth gang leader and Crips co-founder,
current San Quentin Death Row prisoner, and now
a children's book author and Nobel Peace Prize nominee
for the past four years - has written his memoir,
Blue Rage, Black Redemption, an tumultuous,
revealing work. The
book is printed in a quality trade paperback format
so that prisoners may receive the book via the U.S.
mail.
For
more details, call Damamli Publishing Company at
925-705-1612, or email us at staff@damamli.com.
To order a copy of Blue Rage, Black Redemption,
click here.
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Inside
South Central Los Angeles. . .
These hustlers would bet on just about anything - even
who could spit, urinate, or throw a rock the farthest.
I have witnessed cockfights, cricket fights, even fish
fights, and pay-per-view street fights between individuals
from 6 to 50 years of age.
The
Gang As Family. . .
Barring
the relationship with my mother, the closest reality to
family for me was the Crips. In the ultimate display of
fatherhood irresponsibility I had forsaken my sons to
barnstorm throughout South Central Los Angeles in the
name of "Crippen." I had only faint memories
of my first-born son Travon when he was a baby. I only
saw him when I periodically showed up to have sex with
his mother Bonnie. In reality I was no more than a sperm
donor who took the position that once the job was done,
more fathering wasn't necessary.
At
Last, Redemption. . .
I was beginning to understand that my experiences with
the dysfunctional status quo of the prison culture - as
well as drug addiction, poverty, gangsterism, racism,
and other roadblocks - had become the excuses that defined
my life. But no longer would my life, my being, be dictated
by blind ignorance. Nor would I ever again allow the excuse
of circumstance to dictate who I should be. It was daily
studying and questioning that prompted my soul searching.
I began to develop a sense of critical reasoning from
which sprang the first stirrings of conscience. This was
the moment when redemption infused itself into my life.
