Inside the Crips: Life Inside L.A.'s Most Notorious Gang - Paperback

by Colton Simpson (Author), Ann Pearlman (With)

Inside the Crips is a memoir of Colton Simpson's life as a Crip -- beginning at the tender age of ten in the mid 70s -- and his prison turnaround twenty-five years later.

Back Jacket

..(an) arresting memoir...---Entertainment Weekly

Colton C-Loc Simpson was a Crip. Beginning at the age of ten in the mid-1970s, Simpson's world was defined in terms of war. By the time he quit, Simpson had risen through the ranks to become Stabilizer and later, General.

Simpson was the son of Dick Simpson, a ballplayer for the California Angels and Cincinnati Reds, but even before he became a gangbanger, his life was rough. Raised by his grandmother in South Central L.A., Simpson didn't so much turn to the streets as become engulfed by them: without asking to become part of the gang, his forced induction into the Crips meant running down an alley while the members opened fire on him.

INSIDE THE CRIPS is Simpson's unstinting account--emotional, violent, ugly and tender--of life inside a gang. You'll meet intense characters such as Smiley, Simpson's fellow gangbanger, and heartbreaking ones such as Gina, the mother of two young sons who married Simpson in prison.

The book provides a window into an often misunderstood way of life.--Publishers Weekly

Author Biography

Colton Simpson is a former Crip who has worked as a promoter for Ice T, Aaron Hall and Guerilla Black. He has been in and out of prison for over twenty years.

Ann Pearlman is the author of GETTING FREE: WOMEN AND PSYCHOTHERAPY, KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING and INFIDELITY: A MEMOIR. She has a private psychotherapy practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she lives.