How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
There's a reason why so many inmates use storytelling as a coping tool. Being in prison and stripped of your freedom is painful and degrading, and each day is a fight to maintain your sanity. In order to cope, some inmates make up entirely different lives for themselves, saying anything that might help them seem different or one notch above the rest of us poor, wretched souls.(2.23)
Shaka says this early in the book, long before he talks about his own investment in writing. But it's a nice foreshadowing of what will happen for him eventually—telling his story will become more than just a coping tool, but a way he actually starts to make a new life for himself by transforming as a person.
Quote #2
O'Neal-El was a member of the infamous drug crew Young Boys Incorporated, and his book was a collection of stories loosely based on his experience in the streets. He asked if I wanted to read one of his stories, and I laughed at the idea of an inmate writing a book. But I didn't have anything else to do, so I said yes. (10.20)
Irony is often grim and sad. But this irony is pretty cool: Shaka starts out by laughing at the idea of an inmate writing a book, but he'll eventually find that writing transforms his own life for the better
Quote #3
When I started reading O'Neal-El's stories, I couldn't put them down. The stories were only eighty or ninety pages long, but they were detailed and vivid. When I finished, I felt like I had grown up alongside O'Neal-El and his crew, wearing Adidas Top Tens, fur-lined Max Julien coats, and wide-brimmed campaign hats. (10.21)
Shaka's life circumstances are really different from a lot of the reading memoirs you run across, but what he says here about feeling like he's grown up alongside someone through reading is a pretty widespread sentiment. Not all readers say this about these particular stories, but we bet you've heard somebody say something similar about Elizabeth Bennett or Harry Potter.