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When I was twelve I began dreaming of joining the Black Panthers and waging war on white America after I read Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice. That same year I heard the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." and was immediately down with the British working class struggle against whatever it was that was oppressing them.  I loved rebellion, and it didn't matter if there wasn't one exactly tailored to a white kid from a semi-rural part of Ohio. I would make the ones at hand fit. My rebelliousness eventually led to my incarceration in a facility for problem juveniles, and then to my running away.

It was only after I put Hella Nation together that I realized most of my subjects are runaways of one sort or another, from the anarchist kids of "Wingnut's Last Day on Earth" to the couple profiled in "Mad Dogs and Lawyers" who fled their staid lives as San Francisco attorneys to become involved with a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. Even though my own attempt to run away led to personal catastrophe, I still have a feeling for those who are attempting to make the break.

Even as a twelve-year-old, I sensed that my yearning to become a militant Black Panther was not only doomed but ludicrous. At the same time, the call of rebellion was intoxicating. For this reason, I am drawn to rebels of all types, however doomed, ridiculous or even reprehensible the cause. I like rebel stories because for a time at least, I'm able to go on the road to revolution, and at the end of it go home.

Evan Wright, Hella Nation, Putnam, Penguin Books