When he was three years old, James Reed lost his family to a raging apartment fire. Reed, taken in by his loving, but unwell grandmother, turned to the streets of Englewood, on Chicago's South Side, for survival at age eight. There he found the love and sense of belonging and purpose that he could not have with his family. Life in the street gang turned violent as Reed, often feeling angry and alone in the world, entered his teenage years. Reed embraced criminality as he floated from home to home, and in and out of juvenile detention. But it was also a time in his life when he fell in love, ran with a loyal crew, made lots of money, and traveled the country. Years later, from a downstate prison in his early 20s, Reed, with only an eighth grade education, began writing by hand story after true story of this reckless period in his life, a time, he now realizes, when he did not value his life or the lives of others-a time when he wanted to die and be with the family he never really knew. Drawing upon writing guides from the prison library, Reed developed his skills as a writer as he rewrote, revised, and structured the assorted recollections from his teenage years into a riveting, fully-formed manuscript. Escaping Death's Grip, with an Afterword by University of Chicago sociologist Chad Broughton, is Reed's autobiography of growing up in Englewood. With violence spiking in Chicago, Escaping Death's Grip is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about the streets from someone who lived them.
About the Author: James "Jig" Reed was born in 1986 in Chicago and spent most of his youth on the streets of Englewood. He was raised, in part, by his loving grandmother after losing his parents, JoAnn Reed and Eric Bradley, and all three of his younger siblings-Dominique, Justin, and Eric Jr.-in a house fire on January 11, 1990 when he was three. Due to his grandmother's mental illness, Reed was also raised in the streets, starting at age eight when he was taken in by a group of Black P-Stones. In his teen years, the focus on this book, Reed became heavy involved in the Black Disciples street gang. Reed spent nearly all of his adult life in jail or prison on gun charges. Reed, released from Lawrence Correctional Center in June 2016, currently lives with his aunt LaWana in Roseland, a community on the Far South Side of Chicago, where he is monitored with an ankle bracelet and is searching for work. Reed wrote Escaping Death's Grip in prison. Chad Broughton (Afterword, editor) is a sociologist and senior lecturer in public policy at the University of Chicago.