But starting the Crips only made things worse. It's no fun being a gangbanger. Gangbangers are always looking over their shoulders because they're afraid someone may hurt them. Williams' most recent book is aimed at middle school students. It is a place where men have been killed and where some have even killed themselves.
Prison is hell.
Williams lives, for now, in San Quentin's East Block with more than 400 other condemned inmates. His cell, smaller than most bathrooms, contains a steel bed frame and a toilet. He has to roll up his mattress to use his bed as a desk. He exercises with about 50 other death row inmates in a rooftop yard that is enclosed by a chainlink fence. Violence can come from someone you hardly know, or even from someone who is very close to you.