Product Description

While Felicia Pearson is a brilliant actor in a truly chilling role, what's most remarkable about 'Snoop' is what she has overcome in real life. Born a three-pound, cross-eyed crack baby in East Baltimore and raised in a foster home, Snoop proved she was as tough as the streets. Showing an early aptitude for drug slinging and violence, she thrived as a baby gangsta until she landed in Jessup State Penitentiary after killing a woman in self-defence. There she rebelled violently against the system and it would take the news of the murder of her childhood mentor, a local drug-dealer called Uncle Loney, for her to decide to turn her life around. Then, after being discovered in a nightclub by one of The Wire's cast members and recruited to the show, fiction began tio mirror life as 'snoop, drawing on the tribulations of her past, created one of television's most frightening and intriguing villains

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11367 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review
'A powerful story of someone trying to find her way in a dark world, realizing she can still choose her life's direction even in tremendously difficult circumstances. Pearson's narrative is spare, even poetic, rendering traumatic moments all the more powerful' - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

About the Author
David Ritz is the author of Tavis Smiley's bestselling memoir, What I Know for Sure. He has collaborated with Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, BB King and Laila Ali amongst many others

Customer Reviews

An Interesting and Enjoyable Book
Grace After Midnight tells the life story of actress Felicia Snoop Pearson who plays the character of the same name on The Wire. Snoop tells the story of having been born a crack baby, growing up in a rough neighborhood as a foster child, going through life as a butch lesbian, getting drawn into street crime, being sent to prison for what she says was a self-defense shooting and her life since getting out of prison including being cast as a hit woman on The Wire. She has led a tough and colorful life so has many stories which she honestly shares even when they don't put her in a very sympathetic light. Snoop is straightforward and lacking in self-pity which stops Grace After Midnight from glamorizing crime or using her childhood as a excuse for her later actions.

Although I would recommend this book it is not without its flaws. The chapters are very short and it is written in an overly simplistic form. I completely understand her reasons for doing this as one of the main reasons for writing this book seems to be to encourage ghetto kids to stay out of a life of crime and many of these kids lack the education to read long or overly articulate books but I found that it detracted from the quality of the writing. I don't doubt the revelatory moments of her life were very real to her but descriptions of them didn't have the desired emotional intensity at least from me. She also occasionally contradicts herself for example at one point she says she has never been promiscuous despite writing earlier she slept around with wild girls in her adolescence.

However, Snoop has a good story to tell which makes Grace After Midnight a good read and it is an eye opener about the brutality that children growing up in the ghetto are exposed to.

Brilliant
I am a huge fan of The Wire but Snoops character was not my favourite. I saw this book in Waterstones and thought I would read it. For such a young lady she has seen and been through so much that she deserves praise. Born a crack baby, going to jail and then coming through it all to be a top charater in The Wire shows that people can turn their life around.

Hard hitting and powerful
One thing that must be said about this book is that Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson doesn't pull any punches. She has had a very hard life but never pleads for sympathy and deals with her problems with refreshing honesty. I found this a very easy read as the chapters are very short but always engrossing. At times it is hard to believe that she has managed to survive given the brutal life she chose to lead. The fact that she has now starred in 'The Wire' and written this book shows that there is hope for even the most seemingly hopeless of lives.

You can't escape from the character she plays as many of her experiences could have come straight from an episode of that brilliant series. Her life story is told in an unfussy way and it could be described as simplistic the way the chapters are written. But that in no way detracts from a compelling and at times heartbreaking life. For all of us that are having withdrawel symptoms now that 'The Wire' has finished, this book is a tonic and I have no problem in recommending it.