Born fi' dead : a journey through the Jamaican posse underworld / Laurie Gunst.

Among the ethnic gangs that rule America's inner cities, none has had the impact of the Jamaican posses. Spawned in the ghettos of Kingston as mercenary street-fighters for the island's politicians, the posses began migrating to the United States in the early 1980s, just in time to catch and ride the crack wave as it engulfed this country. Feared and honored for being "harder than the rest," these Jamaican cocaine syndicates laid claim to their new American territory with outlaw bravura and a ruthlessness that was immortalized in song; the raw dance hall music born of their world defined "gangsta" culture for a generation of angry sufferers in Jamaica, America, and England. The posses are part of the Third World diaspora that is changing the face of the United States, yet they live in a world few Americans will ever know. The voices of their young soldiers go unheard, silenced early by the guns that both distinguish and destroy their lives. They see themselves as legendary desperadoes in the best Hollywood tradition, taking their aliases from the spaghetti-western gunfighters and Mafia dons whose style they revere. Drawn to the posses by their fusion of Wild West fantasy and brutal reality, Laurie Gunst spent a decade moving with the gang members between Jamaica and America. She slowly became a player in her own story; entangled in the web of the gunmen's lives and those of the law enforcement officials who tracked them. "You are not here to say who is good and who is bad," one Kingston ally warned her. "You should only be committed to reality." Born Fi' Dead is her portrait of the posses, the first account of Jamaica's international gangs.

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