Down the ages warriors have told the stories about their powers and their deeds. And some of their stories have made it into print––those of Black Elk, a Sioux shaman; Two Leggings and Plenty Coups, Crow Indians; Wolf Chief, the eagle hunter; Tukup and Tariri, shrinkers of heads; and others from North America, New Guinea, the island of Alor, the highlands of Luzon and even a Bedouin.

H. David Brumble’s ‘Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies’ introduces readers to all these warrior autobiographies—and to the memoirs of warriors who live just down the block: Carl Joyeaux’s ‘Out of the Burning’, Colton Simpson’s ‘Inside the Crips’, Nathan McCall’s ‘Makes Me Wanna Holler’ and Sanyika Shakur’s ‘Monster’. Gangbangers, Brumble argues, have told life stories that are eerily like the life stories that come to us from warrior tribes. He suggests that gangbangers were so alienated from the larger society that they reinvented something very similar to the tribal-warrior cultures right in the asphalt heart of American cities.

Grisly, probing and resonant with the voices of generations of fighters, ‘Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies’ is an unsettling work of cross-disciplinary scholarship.

H. David Brumble is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and has won both of the university’s most prestigious teaching prizes. He has written four books and numerous articles. Brumble has lived and traveled in 45 countries. He has taken students to 28 countries, mostly in the developing world.

List of Figures; Preface; Introduction; 1. To Drink of Death: Tukup’s Head-Hunter Autobiography and the Characteristics of Tribal-Warrior Autobiography; 2. The Kinds of Street-Gang Autobiography; 3. The Bubble Reputation: Honor, Glory and Status among the Warriors; 4. Glory Manifest: Coup Tales, Warrior Boasts and Gangsta Rap; 5. Brutal Honesty; 6. The Education of the Warrior; 7. The Warrior Choice; 8. Mona Ruiz’s ‘Two Badges’: Women Warriors and Warriors’ Women; 9. Sam Blowsnake and the Unfortunate Pottawatomie; 10. The Gangbanger Autobiography of Monster Kody (AKA Sanyika Shakur); 11. Battle, Raid and Stratagem; 12. Berserkers and the Tragedy of Warrior Individualism; Appendix A On Circumcision; Appendix B A List of the Tribal Peoples and Street Gangs Mentioned in This Book; Annotated Bibliography of Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies; Bibliography of Works Cited; Index.