Fist Stick Knife Gun - A Personal History of Violence in America" by Geoffrey Canada

Last week, our students at Project 1:17 received a copy of Geoffrey Canada's Fist Stick Knife Gun. This is an incredible book which addresses the challenge of growing up in a violent neighborhood. This memoir is a MUST READ for youthworkers.

Canada is the CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone; and the East Coast regional coordinator for the Black Community Crusade for Children (BCCC), a nationwide effort coordinated by Marian Wright Edelman and the Children's Defense Fund to make saving black children the number-one priority in the black community.

He was the first recipient of the Heinz Award; and the 2004 Harold W. McGraw winner.

Here's an excerpt from the backcover of his amazing book:

"I remember being small, vulnerable, and scared. I remember growing up in the South Bronx." So begins Geoffrey Canada's shattering story of his childhood. It was a world in which the 'sidewalk' boys learned the codes of the block from their elders and were ranked - and to some degree protected - through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. But then, through an unforseen chain of consequences set in motion in the 1960s by New York Governor Rockefeller's drug laws, the streets changed: The stakes got higher."

If Canada's book is of great interest to you, then also be sure to pick up Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street.