Month: November 2016

My Life

Piece of the Week

by Michelle I didn’t have the best life growing up. I grew up without a mother or a father. My grandma played both parts as a parent, not only to me but to ve other grandkids, working hard to keep a roof over our heads. Many times we had beans and rice for days. I didn’t have much of a childhood. I was forced to give that up at a very early age and help my grandma look after my cousins and my baby sister. I remember telling my grandma that I would be the only one out of the whole

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My Life Story

The Beat Without

by Darrell McGreggor  My name is Darrell McGreggor. I am forty-eight years old and I am an ex-gang member. When I was fourteen years old, I moved into my father’s home and I became troublesome— most of which was internal. I was headstrong and did whatever I wanted to do. I started hanging with the wrong crowd of people. I became mischievous and looking for love in the wrong places. At age sixteen, I joined a gang for acceptance and to be known. I wanted people to fear me. At the same time, I wanted my former peers to respect me.

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My Life Story

The Beat Without

by Darrell McGreggor My name is Darrell McGreggor. I am forty-eight years old and I am an ex-gang member. When I was fourteen years old, I moved into my father’s home and I became troublesome— most of which was internal. I was headstrong and did whatever I wanted to do. I started hanging with the wrong crowd of people. I became mischievous and looking for love in the wrong places. At age sixteen, I joined a gang for acceptance and to be known. I wanted people to fear me. At the same time, I wanted my former peers to respect

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The Seasons of Change

The Beat Without

by Giggs I remember telling myself I would never come back, I kept my word for the next seven years. It didn’t take too long for the fog to lift up out of my head, wanting back all I had and realizing how much I should’ve been grateful for a bit late… I stressed for the longest how much I just wanted to get back to how and where I was, not materialistically or tangibly. Just me, the person I had become, learning to love, to live. To embrace life as it comes. But the more it is the more I

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The Cost Of Drug Addiction

Piece of the Week

by Glenn I lost my older sister to drug addiction. She started to do drugs when she was fteen and now she is twenty-two and in jail because of the drugs. She is now schizophrenic and she lost her two kids because of drugs, too. She can’t think or live without someone with her. If someone doesn’t help her she’ll probably be dead somewhere because she thinks that people are after her and she thinks that cars are fake and she’ll walk right in front of them. That’s why I stay away from drugs. I try to help other kids stay

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Reality Hurts

The Beat Without

by Phong Dang BANG, BANG, BANG!!!  With no regard for human life I recklessly shot four times into a group of my rivals and Phung Thanh Nguyen is lying bloody on the floor. I wake up startled as the reality of what I have done hit me! I open my eyes and I’m back in my tiny cell sweating from the nightmare that I had caused.  Serving twenty-three years into my incarceration I try to gain insight into why I became this monster. And I start to reflect… I was born on January 24, 1975, in Saigon, the capitol of Vietnam. 

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From Her Dream

Piece of the Week

by Chris I’m reading a drawing just tryin’ to stay busy, this white room is shrinking I’m getting dizzy, I’m tired of waiting, contemplating and debating on the next thing to do, with all of these guards, I’m trying not to be rude, sitting thinking ‘bout my family and momma, I hate to say it but the woman’s just drama, all that woman does is yell and scream, I hope she wakes up from her dream, starving herself washing it down, she drinks herself so she don’t have to frown, I try not to think about it so much, it starts with a

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