Author P. J. Rondinone grew up in the South Bronx and spent his youth as a gang member. He writes, "What does it mean to see your friends die around you from violence, as I have? Death at an early age is a constant reality in the lives and characters of The Digital Hood". These stories portray urban young people who find coded ways to speak -- digitally over the Net, graffiti-tagging on walls, overpasses, and billboards, or rapping. The language in this book is theirs, and in some way each story touches on the question of who controls speech, and what it means to be silenced.

The gang leader who narrates the horrifically funny "Something for Sucio"; the girl with a crush on a graffiti-writer in "The Nobody"; the victim of police torture in "To Break a Nigga's Neck"; the risen-and-fallen rapper in "Gangsta Bond"; the bewildered old Italian couple in the riot-torn L.A. of "You People"; the middle-class black man who can't escape his past in "My Protector", and the gleeful, imaginative hacker of "The Digital Hood" -- their voices and stories are unforgettable.