Bøker av Russell Vann

The saga continues . . . . The words "I love you" are echoed a million times a minute around the world, but what is love? Is it about a spiritual connection? Is love a form of infatuation? Are the words "I love you" a source of manipulation? In Ghetto Bastard: Book 2, twenty-six-year-old Malik Russell continues to discover the negative impact of love as he knows it.Society dictates that when a child is born, his mother automatically loves him. That she would protect and die for him-maternal love. But some mothers abuse their children, use them for financial gain, or even kill them. Some mothers neglect their children, like in Malik's case. If a child is raised with the absence of real love in his life, how does he learn to give it? How can he recognize it? The road to discovering self-love-the greatest love of all-is a rough one for kids who were raised by the ghetto; love can be as elusive as food, shelter, and clothing. Malik had love, he had a good job, he was making it. But infatuation, temptation, and manipulation got in the way of it all. With no foundation to fall back on, he gave up everything "for the girl." And now he's paying the price-he's alone, jobless, homeless, and hungry. What will he do now?Follow Malik on his solo journey to find true love: the love of God, the love of a good woman, and the love of family. And find out if it will be enough to keep him alive.

Society has labeled babies born between 1961 and 1982 Generation X. But in 1968, in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, which was one of the most dope-infested areas of the world, they donned another moniker. Right across the bridge from Harlem, in the glory days of notorious drug kingpins such as Nicky Barns and Frank Lucas, children born in this section were known as Generation Next, because no one looked at those babies and asked: "Who's going to be a doctor? Lawyer? Politician? Business man? Real estate tycoon?" Instead they wondered: Which of these babies is the next dope fiend? The next dope dealer? The next one to go to prison? The next unwed teenage mother?The odds of one of these children, a Gen Next, surviving their circumstances undamaged were on par with the journey of sperm to egg: three hundred million are in the race, but only one makes it to the target. Ghetto Bastard is a story of survival. Malik was born into these circumstances-with no father to teach him how to be a man, and to a mother that didn't want him. Malik must navigate his way to adulthood with only the streets as his guide-through the seventies heroin infestation, the eighties crack rage, and the nineties Clinton mass incarceration era and AIDS epidemic. Once he becomes a man, his vision broadens, but will it be enough to abandon the very ghetto that created him? Ghetto Bastard is the intimate journey of an innocent child in search of love and self-worth. He just wants what we all want. And Malik Russell wasn't born with any quit, so he's got that going for him, but neither was his opponent: the ghetto.

In Ghetto Bastard III, the third installment of Russell Vann's memoir series, his compelling, courageous, and empowering life story comes full circle.Fight! Fight! Fight! Malik Russell has been fighting his whole life. Now, he literally has to fight for it. After outrunning fate and creating an existence outside the ghetto for himself and his family, Malik is diagnosed with an incurable illness. This makes him realize that some aspects of living in the ghetto were a frame of mind. As if that isn't enough for this survivor, Malik must encompass every lesson he's ever learned from his abusive and unsettling upbringing to outwit the very person who personifies the meaning of the word ghetto-his mother.There are no guarantees in life, but there's even less when you're born a ghetto bastard. Will Malik find the inner strength to hold onto life beyond the ghetto? And, even if he does, will he beat the odds and reap the rewards of living honestly, of being loved?