Snapshots is a cover-to-cover inspirational guide for African-Americans who aspire to understand themselves and the world in which they live. This book will not merely acquaint you with countless gems of wisdom, it will also open your eyes and motivate you to want to become a better person.Snapshots is not simply a book of 365 affirmations. It is a provocative day-to-day adventure, a daily event that will transform you. This is the one book that every African-American should place on their "to-do" list for 2018.This book will set your soul on fire! Read and Rejoice!Don't die before you have read this book!
For most of my life, I was the guy most wannabe thugs wished they could be. Officially declared a "menace to society", I was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for my role as mastermind of a series of daring bank robberies in the 70s. Two involved shootouts. One with the police. The other with a citizen in a bank parking lot. While confined, I took part in an even more daring prison escape. Despite this seeming penchant for violence, I consoled myself with the notion that I was merely a poet trapped in a gangsta's body and oddly enough, this wasn't far from the truth as I had evolved from a family of teachers, four of whom taught English. As such, I learned, early on, to respect and to appreciate language since my grandmother was very strict and would not tolerate improper grammar under her roof. From the start, there appeared to be a household conspiracy to convert me into a writer. By the time I was ten, I possessed a private library fit for a scholar, had a new typewriter, a big desk, and plenty of blank paper. By 11, I was a whiz at Scrabble. At twelve, I had completed my first novel. By my 13th birthday, I had discovered hustling and I immediately dropped out of school and adopted "the streets" as my home. By 14, I was in reform school for assaulting a police officer. While there, I was a star journalist, the first black deemed smart enough to work in the print shop and on the in-house newsletter. I served one year and a day. Upon my release, with hardly any delays, I embarked on a personal crime spree, and at the age of 15 years-old, I was sent to prison where I was the youngest convict there. While in the Youth Center, I acquired my high school diploma at 16, wrote my first play, turned militant, and when released at 19, went to New York to join the Black Panthers. In New York, I discovered heroin. Writing and the revolution would both have to wait as a drug habit left little room for anything else. When I tired of being a junkie, I kicked my fascination with getting high, but years later would emerge as the "alleged" kingpin of a notorious heroin distribution ring. Finally brought down by the FBI and DEA in 1997, I again was sent to federal prison. This time I would be gone for another decade, but once more I turned back to what I had turned my back on: writing. I studied journalism, started a writer's colony, and mentored other aspiring prison writers I have finally gone from wrong to "write!"
