The Original
American
Gangster is
Back!

Caleb Alexander has woven his
most explosive and provocative
tale to date.  Belly of the
Beast takes the readers on a
violent, gut wrenching, deeply
emotional journey through the
American prison system.  A
place where friends become
enemies, and enemies band
together for survival in a system
that is designed for their
destruction, and in a society that
has written them off.
Belly of the Beast is a
straight forward look at racism,
the prison industrial complex, and
the nature of our humanity.
Throw in Racist prison guards,
a former Grand Wizard of
the KKK, Billionaire tax
evaders, violent prison gangs,
The mafia, and one man's
struggle to make it back home to
his woman and child, and you
have a story that only Alexander
can tell.  
Welcome, to the Federal
Prison System; welcome to the
Belly of the Beast.

That night, I met with Duck, Ghirt, and Young
Gangsta.  Duck opened up his gym back, and
showed me a bag full of iron.  Some sharpened,
some not.
“Where in the hell did that come from?”  I asked.
“Welding shop,”  Duck smiled.
“That place is wide open,”  Ghirt added.
“The bed post,”  I said out loud.  Sharpen all of
these, and get whatever else you can get, and then
have some of the brothers in the welding shop,
HVAC, or where ever, solder them inside of the
hollow metal bed post, in the rooms where our
people are.”
Duck nodded.  
“Good work, Duck,”  I said, patting him on his
shoulder.  I peered in the bag once again, and
selected a sixteen inch piece of steel, that was
already sharpened.  “I’ll hang on to this one.”  I
stuck the shank inside of my khakis.
The Border Brothers had attacked a group without
provocation, without notifying us, so that we could
keep our people out of the way, without even giving
the Califas a chance to handle their own people in
house.  They had violated all the rules of prison
warfare, and had changed the face of prison warfare
inside of our joint for good.  The Califas had been
caught off guard, but fortunately for them, they had
the kitchen weapons to fall back on.  We would not
be so fortunate.  But we were going to be ready.  I
had about thirty soldiers following me.  I now had a
responsibility to them, and to make sure that they
returned home to their families.  I was young, and in
charge of people’s lives.  For the first time in my
life, I had real responsibility.  For the first time in
my life, I had to step up, and be a real man.  To bad
it took the life and death situation of being in prison
to transform me.  Be that as it may, I had been
transformed.  I made a silent covenant that no one,
under my charge, would leave in a body bag.  We
were all going to make it out of this place alive.  I
was determined to get these husbands back home to
their wives, these sons back home to their mothers,
these fathers back home to their children.
“Duck.”
“What’s up, San Antone?”
“Make sure you bury some of the weapons up on
the rec yard too.”

Banging
Excerpt