Shaka Senghor was raised in a middle-class neighbourhood on Detroit's east side during the height of the 1980s crack epidemic. An honour roll student and a natural leader, he dreamed of becoming a doctor—-but at age eleven, his parents' marriage began to unravel, and the beatings from his mother worsened, sending him on a downward spiral that saw him run away from home, turn to drug dealing to survive, and end up in prison for murder at the age of nineteen, fuming with anger and despair.