Geoffrey Canada remembers one Saturday morning in the South Bronx when he was 11, waiting for a friend, a bigger boy named Mike, to play basketball. While Canada was waiting, he happened to bounce the ball, Mike's ball, into a brand new car parked at the curb. The owner, a big man, was furious. In his fury he took the ball, opened the car door and locked it in his car. Then Mike came on the scene and the situation became increasingly dangerous:

Mike snicked open his switchblade. “I realized that this was decision time […]. Some of the swagger had gone from the man's demeanor. After a few tense moments the big man caved. Mike got his ball back.” Canada was deeply affected. Fear and adrenalin were banging through his veins: “But from Mike […] nothing. He had been willing to risk his life for a basketball. Well, not for the ball itself, but for the principle behind Union Avenue's idea of being a man” (no. 39: 41– 42).

Every gangbanger autobiographer remembers such scenes. Every one of them talks in one way or another about the “principle” behind East L.A.'s, or the South Side of Chicago's, or Harlem's idea of being a man. In doing so they are echoing a theme found in tribal- warrior narratives the world over. Take, for example, Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior.

Two Leggings is one of my favorite warrior autobiographies. I like the book for many reasons, but especially for the clear sense it conveys of a man struggling to ascend the warrior status ladder. Most tribal warriors make it seem that their rise to honor and glory was inevitable. Trials, they have had, and sore have they been pressed in battle, but they rose to glory as a plant turns to the sun. Two Leggings, on the other hand, stands more nearly naked before us.