Holler if you hear me: searching for Tupac Shakur

Preface : "I always wanted to make a book out of my life" : in search of Tupac

Childhood chains, adolescent aspirations

1. "Dear mama" : motherhood and a hood's mother

2. "The son of a panther" : a postrevolutionary childhood

3. "No Malcolm X in my history text" : school, learning, and Tupac's books

Portraits of an artist

4. "Give me a paper and a pen" : Tupac's place in hip-hop

5. "For all the real niggas out there" : authenticity blues

Bodies and beliefs

6. "Do we hate our women?" : female per versions

7. "But do the Lord care?" : God, suffering, compassion, and death in the ghetto

8. "I got your name tatted on my arm" : reading the black body

Epilogue : "how long will they mourn me?" : posthumous presences of a ghetto saint.