Eldridge Cleaver did it.
Yusef Shakur did it.
His daddy, Ahjamu Baruti, did it too.
Tookie William’s did it with Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir, and Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Live From Death Row put us right at the frontlines of penal life. So it is no wonder to get another former ghetto misfit, funky roustabout, fractured miscreant, bad-boy ex-felon to change his ways, grab a pen, get pad and join the latest literary trend of what I call “post-penal literature”.
Behind the glossed out façade of Shaka Senghor’s latest book, Crack: Volume I, there is actually a point and method to the madness. Detective Devon Jensen returns to the smoked out wastelands of Detroit’s post post-industrial mess of crime, dope, bitches and bud. He is immediately beset with the matter of a slain ex-homie, possibly a drug-related killing. Essentially, Jensen must solve the murder, or get gaffled up in a whirlwind of slick detective mumbo jumbo, hood dynamics, and murder-mystery mayhem. That’s about the jist of this story.
Senghor is no Baldwin, but his writing is decent, and his ability to transfer drama into a cogent tapestry of narrative deluxe is certainly proven is this story. I especially appreciated the back-n-forth sequences, yet, not much of it is done with any real sense of creativity, verve, or originality (i.e. “we’ve seen this somewhere before”). I would go so far as to say that some of what Senghor attempted to do (via creative writing) should be left to the literary artists. But, that doesn’t mean that Crack is whack. Nope, I actually got the point of its message, and I liked the description, and Senghor’s authentic portrayal of what he obviously knows much of. Lousy editing kills any promise of any story, so on that note I would recommend a good editor with his next book (I’m not talking bout myself), and a little more creative thrust. Otherwise, Senghor certainly joins the list of other authors who left thug life for lit life, and I think he may be here to stay.
4/5
what about the kennedys 