KNUCKLEHEADPUBLISHING
Each One Teaches One!
KnuckleHead Publishing prints inspiring material and supports young authors of color. Please purchase one of our books to support the mission and authors. Our books are read in high schools, colleges, and other settings.
More about “The KnuckleHead’s Guide to Escaping the Trap”…
FEATURED IN...
"Drugs were the through line of Whitaker’s childhood, and when he turned fifteen crack addicts would become his clients…Whitaker was perhaps not the archetypal drug dealer: in between crack sales, he’d read poetry and fiction…Whitaker’s story had an unusual resolution. Through a combination of grit and his self-described “thirst for knowledge,” he managed to finish high school. He then earned bachelor’s degree from Rutgers, a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Southern California, and then, two years ago, a law degree from the University of Miami. Today, he is a staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Florida, and the founder of Project KnuckleHead, a nonprofit for young people ensnared in the juvenile-justice system"
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TRILOGY OVERVIEW
Follow Amir’s transformative journey through the trilogy of challenges that molded him into an agent of change. In the first chronicle, he rebounds from incarceration and expulsion from school, managing to escape the systems devastating his community. For the next 12 years, the underdog attends leading universities across the country and earns five college degrees. Finally, Amir travels to 30 countries before his 30th birthday, broadening his perspective on the world and humanity.
Book One— Origins
During the first 19 years of his life, Amir is engulfed in a war without realizing it. Poverty and the War on Drugs entrap his neighborhood in a cycle of addiction, incarceration, and chaos. Dominating the drug trade at age 15 brings the world to his fingertips—until he and his mother are arrested in a police raid. Amir struggles through the rest of his teenage years after being kicked out of school and lured back into the Trap. A battle to rise above an inner-city warzone plagued with drugs, violence, and death transforms him into a resilient young man--one difficult lesson at a time. Follow this hard-fought journey of a boy with an unrelenting desire to overcome the odds.
Book Two— Million: Money on my Mind
Miraculously completing high school after being expelled, Amir reluctantly enrolls in community college. After his thirst for knowledge is awakened, he doubles his high school GPA and plunges into a 12-year educational voyage across the country. In the process, Amir graduates from the top public university in New Jersey, receives his law degree from Florida’s leading university in Miami, and obtains a doctorate in Los Angeles from one of the nation’s top 25 universities. By the time he completes his fifth college degree, Amir discovers education’s power to take him anywhere and allow him to do anything. But his lifelong passion to understand the world comes with a hefty consequence: a student debt bill close to a million dollars.
Book Three— Street Traveler
As a 22-year-old college student, Amir becomes the first person from his neighborhood to obtain a passport. An opportunity to visit Africa unleashes an addiction to traveling and culture shock that changes him forever. He becomes obsessed with a goal to visit 30 countries before his 30th birthday, and embarks on an eye-opening quest throughout all corners of the globe. Realizing he does not know how to travel, he relies on "street smarts" to escape danger, explore forbidden places, and survive on a few dollars a day. Curiosity leads him to intriguing destinations across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In the process, Amir uncovers priceless life lessons through encounters with some of the quirkiest and most inspirational people in the world.