Charlie Brown Was killed in a Los Angeles gang shootout shortly after Lil Fade’s suicide. He was twenty-one.
Lil Bling His real name is Roderick, and he is now serving a fifteen-year stretch in a federal penitentiary in Atlanta for conspiracy to distribute nine ounces of crack cocaine.
Big Pimpin Melvin aka Big Pimpin is serving time in a federal penitentiary in Colorado. He received a twenty-year sentence for conspiracy to deliver eighteen ounces of crack cocaine.
Fro-Dog His real name is Christopher, and he’s serving time at a federal penitentiary in Illinois. He was sentenced to twenty years for possession of crack cocaine. After the landmark Brady case, he was able to give back five years for the gun.
Big Mike He was killed in the East Terrace by C-Low, who jacked him for all of his money and then shot him.
C-Low His real name is Charles. He became a jacker and bank robber. Though no longer active these days, he still resides at the top of the federal authorities’ most wanted lists.
Re-Re Reginald aka Re-Re married Nikki and moved to Houston. Today they have two children, and Re-Re is the owner of a Jamaican restaurant and club.
Gary Kaufmann Was passed over for his federal judgeship, but is now a United States Senator.
Judge Weitzer Became a federal judge. He is constantly at odds with the federal legislature because of his judicial activism. He is a very vocal opponent of federal minimum mandatory sentences, and the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.
Lil Anthony Now a major drug dealer, he took over the Courts and much of the Eastside’s drug trade after Dejuan’s death. He is currently engaged in a fierce turf battle for control of the project’s lucrative drug trade.
Cooney He is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.
Preto He is now serving a twenty-year sentence in federal prison. He testified against Cooney and several other officers in exchange for a lesser sentence.
Mr. and Mrs. Chang They still run the store in the Denver Heights, although they now own several others across the city as well.
The East Terrace It was finally closed down and demolished. The area has been turned into a low-income, mixed-housing neighborhood, with the former tenants getting first choice to move back in. Gang members are slowly filtering back in.
The Wheatley Courts The Courts still stand, although a fence has been added. Another generation is slowly taking the reins.
The Denver Heights Another generation of Bloods is slowly taking over, as the younger kids join. Older people are dying, and their homes are being sold to younger couples with children.
The saga of the EASTSIDE will continue…
AFTERWORD
Eastside was the first book I ever wrote. I wrote the book, tucked it away, and then went on to write Two Thin Dimes, and another novel, which eventually became an Essence bestseller. I sold a couple of novels to a famous author/publisher, and then wrote a couple of television pilots, several screenplays, five more novels, and even parts two and three to the bestseller. In the back of my head over all of those years, however, was my first novel, my first love, Eastside.
I dusted Eastside off, read it again, and consulted with several people whose opinions I trusted. It had been years since I wrote the novel, and I struggled with the question of its relevance. Was Eastside still relevant? I found myself questioning the book’s relevance, because like so many others, over the years I had allowed myself to become so focused on the packaging, that I forgot what really mattered, which was the gem inside.
On the exterior, Eastside appears to be a coming-of-age story, amidst the gang violence of the inner city; on a deeper level, Eastside is so much more. Eastside is about the gang violence that has plagued our community; it is about the hopelessness, the poverty, the desolation, and the destruction that has beset our society. Eastside is my scream.
I used my ability to compose words to point an accusatory finger at all of those who comfortably lie under a veil of security, a comfortable blanket of feigned ignorance at the events and activities that take place in our inner-city communities. Eastside is my yell at those who sit idly by, unquestionably devoted to maintaining the shackles and limitations imposed upon them by others, while their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and children are dying in the streets. I shout at those who have not lifted their voices and screamed to the top of their lungs, and called attention to the destruction taking place within our communities.
When I originally wrote Eastside, it was my intention to take the readers on an exploratory journey into the socio-economic conditions that incubate and produce Lil Fades, Dejuans, Too-Lows, and Travons. It was my intention to illuminate the wanton violence, the homicides, the illicit drug trade, the debilitating poverty, and in general, the miasmic conditions that result in an infestation of gangs, and gang affiliation, which are often multi-generational afflictions in many urban communities. Eastside is an alarming beacon to us all.
There exists a perpetual pendulum of violence that swings from one generation to the next, and for the sake of our survival, we must discover why. Why do our children kill and destroy? What is it within their world that makes them capable of committing such atrocities? Why can one grandmother sit on her porch and safely watch the sun set, whilst another must live in fear behind a barricade of chains, locks, bolts, bars, and weapons? How can there exist two different worlds within one city, or even within a few minutes’ driving distance from one another? Why is it that in this day and age, an African American grandmother feels lucky if she has only one grandchild in prison? What have we as a people descended to?
I believe the true tragedy of Eastside, is that it is a mirror image of many areas within urban America. Eastside is not a special set of circumstances, nor is it particular to a certain geographical area. The saga of Eastside is being played out all across America, in all of its epic violence, and destructive tragedy. Our children are being forced to survive in concrete jungles, where they are rapidly devolving into one of two things. They are becoming either predator or prey.
There are no easy answers, nor easy solutions for the conditions described within this novel. Midnight basketball games, gun buyback programs, three strikes laws, and federal minimum mandatory sentences will not solve our problems. Those are someone else’s solutions to our problems, and it is our political marginalization that forces us to accept those impositions. Dead men and convicted felons do not count; dead men and convicted felons cannot vote.
For the majority of our youth, those that survive to experience the ripe old age of eighteen, an even more precarious monster is awaiting them, a prison industrial complex, that is truly a multi-headed hydra of despair. This hydra has evolved into a jobs program for rural communities hit hard by BRAC, the Base Realignment and Closure Committee. It is a multi-billion-dollar boon for an already wealthy corporate America; it is a population control monster that removes the men from our communities when they are at their most productive ages; it is a political control mechanism, as convicted felons no longer have the right to vote; and it is a socioeconomic control mechanism, as most employers will not hire convicted felons, thus limiting upward mobility, and ensuring the prison industrial complex of a plentiful supply of inner-city youths from the next generation. This prison industrial complex is a living organism, because the more it eats, the more it grows. The more young African Americans it ingest, the more prisons that it will need to build, and thus, it grows. Again, the answers will not come easy.
In bringing this novel to the forefront, I also encountered a contingent of people who questioned why I would want to publish something so negative and damaging to the global perception of African Americans. Why not use my talents to write something more positive, I was asked. It is to this contingent that I quote James Baldwin.
“The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.”
We, as a people, hail from a multitude of socioeconomic, educational, cultural, and geograp
hical backgrounds. Our experiences are as numerous and varied as there are grains of sand in the Sahara. I chose to tell a story that would hopefully bring light to the debilitating conditions of one segment of my people. We do not all live in Prince George’s County, or Montgomery County, Maryland; or in Stone Mountain, or Alpharetta, Georgia; just as we do not all live in the Fifth Ward, Marci, Pink House, The Magnolia, or Watts. I chose to tell a story so that we could hopefully examine ourselves, our conditions, and if not find solutions, then at least begin to ask the questions that would eventually lead to the solutions. Again, I wrote this novel to scream.
I also decided to publish this novel for one other reason: Those of us who survived have an obligation to tell the stories of those who did not. We have an obligation to shout, to bring attention to their lives, to bring some kind of meaning to their lives, and to try to reach out to future generations on their behalf. We have an obligation to their families to not forget. The living owe it to the dead to never forget.
Across this nation, tens of thousands of young African American men donned red bandannas and blue ones, and went to war with one another over absolutely nothing. We actually fought a civil war with one another, over nothing. There was something inside of me that refused to allow those deaths to go unnoticed, unspoken of, to be meaningless. If this book changes one child, just one, then it has done its job.
I close by pointing something out to you. I intentionally left out any African American fathers in this book. It was done to highlight their absence in our communities. If I were to have included one father, just one good and decent African American male in this novel, I would have had to cut down the violence in the book, by at least fifty percent. That’s how much of a difference just one good Black man being a role model within his community can make. Just one could change the lives of numerous children. Black men, grab our sons and our daughters. The task is daunting, but not insurmountable. Their greatest heroes are not the ones they see carrying a ball on television, it’s that one who walks through the door in the evening, with his hands dirty from doing a hard day’s work.
Our children are dying. They are dying young, and they are dying in droves. Each year, the shooters and the victims are getting younger and younger. Our babies are being born, and sacrificed to the inner city. They are, in essence, being born to die. This is the true tragedy of Eastside. Let us commit ourselves to working hard and rebuilding our communities, so that we can end this tragedy within our generation. Ten years from now, let there exist no reason for another novel like Eastside. Let this subject matter become an alien concept to our posterity.
Thank you for listening, and may God bless you and keep you.
Sincerely,
Caleb Alexander
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caleb Alexander resides in San Antonio, Texas with his family. He is an Essence No. 1 bestselling author and has written Two Thin Dimes (to be released in 2008), When Lions Dance, One Size Fits All, Big Black Boots and Next Time I Fall. The author has also written several television dramas, and the hilarious and touching screenplay, Finding Gabriel. He has also penned the action/adventure screenplay The Team, a political thriller titled UNICOR and several articles for various magazines. The author can be reached via email at [email protected]. For more information you can visit the author’s website at www.calebalexanderonline.com
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