A Disjointed Search for the Will to Live [Paperback]

Shaka N'Zinga (Author), Robin D. G. Kelley (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2003

Beginning with surrealistic impressions of the author's current prison environment, this provocative book opens into a narrative centred around the ghettos of Baltimore. Our young narrator, inspired heavily by the author's own harrowing experiences, describes a sometimes brutal, sometimes beautiful childhood in urban poverty and adolescence in incarceration. A story driven by its subtle, seamless prose and radical politics, A Disjointed Search For The Will To Live also resonates with painfully realistic anecdotes as well as vivid and memorable characters and events, and passages which drift poignantly through the depths of the subconscious mind. A politically informed, stirring and persuasive look at the horrors of racism and prison life as well as the personal and political strength it takes to overcome such hardships, this novel will take readers down a long path through confusion, anger, changing beliefs and intellectual rebirth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

N'Zinga has been in a Baltimore penitentiary since the age of 16, when he was convicted of the gang-rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl. The circumstances of N'Zinga's arrest and sentencing include a state-appointed attorney who showed up only long enough to tell N'Zinga not to bother fighting the charges, and conflicting testimony that shows some evidence of police coercion. According to N'Zinga himself and to Marc Salotte, whose afterword in this book stages a defense of its author, N'Zinga got wind of the plan to rape his young white neighbor, and decided to take a walk rather than stick around for the act. This back-story would seem irrelevant if it were not for the simple fact that N'Zinga's own writing in this passionate tract is framed by a troubling extended metaphor: the seductive white "she-devil," a symbol for the system that seduces and then ruins young black men, "she who hails from some desolate place in Northern Europe; Mary be her foul name." The book swings back and forth between enjambed prose-poetry and impassioned political discourse, some wildly bad (and deeply offensive), some strikingly beautiful. Presenting himself as someone who was "raped/at the age of six, branded/ retarded at the age of nine,/ called useless at the age of 12,/ banned from all schools at 14,/ charged as a rapist at 16,/ and shoved into prison, raped/ yet again at 17 and 18,/ dying to be free of all pain/ at 19, reclaim life at 20./ Seeking justice at 21," N'Zinga, at very least, raises questions that few want to think about, let alone answer.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Shaka N'Zinga has been incarcerated since the age of sixteen. A Disjointed Search for the Will to Live is his first book. His pamphlets and articles have appeared and have been influential in prisoner support networks and political activist groups. Robin D.G. Kelley is one of the most important Black historians and social critics alive today. His works include: Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working; Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970; We Changed the World: African Americans, 1945-1970; and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press (January 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887128778
• ISBN-13: 978-1887128773
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,603,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)