Rating: 
Summary: Meaningful
Review: The author shares his personal story of growing up in the inner-city. The focus is on helping people understand the culture of violence; not only in the city, but in America. Canada does a wonderful job of showing how violence and acceptance of violence is an ingrained part of our culture. I strongly recommend this highly readable book to anyone interested in America's children and their future. [...]
Rating: 
Summary: Praise for "Fist Stick Knife Gun"
Review: The New Yorker: This wonderful book draws on its author's life as a South Bronx ghetto child....[Canada's] language has a simplicity and directness that make it effective as literature without seeming "literary."The San Francisco Chronicle: [A] searing memoir....Canada's blunt observations are as refreshing as they are bold. The San Francisco Review of Books: Canada's experiences make "Fist Stick Knife Gun" not a theoretical treatise, but a glimpse through the eye of an expert....[A] unique blend of storytelling, investigative political history, and strategies for individual and governmental participation. New York Times Book Review: The vignettes band together with a kind of clarifying momentum, so that the result is something more....A beacon.
Rating:
Summary: Nonviolence in the inner city
Review: This book is incredibly powerful. Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun integrates real stories with tangible solutions. It is an incredible testament to the power of nonviolence in contemporary urban America. I think everyone in the country should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Nonviolence in the inner city
Review: This book is incredibly powerful. Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun integrates real stories with tangible solutions. It is an incredible testament to the power of nonviolence in contemporary urban America. I think everyone in the country should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: HEART WRENCHING TRUTH ABOUT URBAN LIFE
Review: This is a must read for all who work with children of the inner cities. It should be compulsory for martial artists desiring a road map for teaching conflict resolution to young adults and children. I have never before read a depiction that was so lucid about my growing up in NY City. Cananda describes the tight rope that is walked for us who grow up on or around the mean streets and end up in ivy league schools and corporate environments that leave us still disengaged, alienated and disenfranchised. To be healed we must become healers. Cananda outlines the why and how to make a difference. We need now to heed the call. There are solutions......
Rating:
Summary: HEART WRENCHING TRUTH ABOUT URBAN LIFE
Review: This is a must read for all who work with children of the inner cities. It should be compulsory for martial artists desiring a road map for teaching conflict resolution to young adults and children. I have never before read a depiction that was so lucid about my growing up in NY City. Cananda describes the tight rope that is walked for us who grow up on or around the mean streets and end up in ivy league schools and corporate environments that leave us still disengaged, alienated and disenfranchised. To be healed we must become healers. Cananda outlines the why and how to make a difference. We need now to heed the call. There are solutions......
Rating: 
Summary: Child in the 'Hood
Review: This little book is a lot of different things: a memoir of a violent childhood, a study in the psychology the urban poor, a treatise against the gun industry; and a promotion of community service centers. Collectively, these pieces make up an impassioned plea to end the insanity of violence and chaos in the inner city, to stop ignoring the fact that many of our cities' neighborhoods have death rates that qualify them as war zones. It's compelling reading, although at times it felt a little like preaching to the converted. I wish the author had focused exclusively on his childhood; for me, these parts of the book are by far the most interesting. As a teacher who works with inner-city kids, I want to know more about what it's like growing up in that environment, how it shapes your world view. The glimpses we get of the author's neighborhood in the Bronx are fascinating, the best biographical writing I've read in a long time. The story of the author's adult involvement in violence prevention is worthy of telling, but I think it belongs in a separate book. In the context of Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, the perspective of the adult community activist seems simplistic and almost disrespectful to the stark drama of the childhood memories; "that was the problem, here's my solution," Canada seems to imply. The easy answers he offers muffle the powerful resonance of his stories of growing up on the streets.
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