Chapter One

THE TRAP

I am from the Trap that is Toronto. I am from the Trap that is Downsview. I am from the Trap that is known as“Jane and Finch.” I am from the Trap that is Driftwood Court. I am Michael A. Amos, born and raised in the Trap.

The Trap, to anyone who’s been under a rock for the past decade and a half, is a term coined by the South Rap Movement meaning“the hood” or“projects.” See, I didn’t have a regular upbringing like most people, just like most of us raised in the Trap. I have to be the luckiest muthafucka alive, to put it bluntly. That’s the honest-to-God truth. I really do feel sorry for these niggaz coming up in Jane and Finch today because it wasn’t always what it is now. What the mainstream media would have the rest of the country believe was a lie. A goddamn lie. The wool was being pulled over so many of the children’s eyes in the Trap that it’s a wonder how any of them made it out.

The Jane and Finch I remember as a kid? Shit! That place was my Disneyland, Epcot Center, and Universal Studios all-in-one! We didn’t even need to leave the Trap to have a good time growing up. We did it all there, even though we had to save up to be broke.

I got lucky, more so than most kids. I was born into a family that was a little bit different from the rest. Firstly, I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s. My father’s side of the family were entertainers; most of my family on that side used to be professional boxers, including my grandmother. Back then, boxing was undoubtedly the most popular fighting sport in North America. Even my great uncle, Charles Amos, fought for Guyana in the 1968 Olympics. My father used to box too, until he knocked up and married my mom, so the story goes. He thinks he could have gone all the way, but so do most niggaz when they used to do something and then don’t make it.

The prize fighter of my family growing up was my uncle Egerton Marcus. That’s my uncle on my father’s side. He was born in Guyana too, but fought for Canada in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea. He brought home the silver for the middleweight division alongside teammate Lennox Lewis, a man who needs no introduction. He’s beaten everyone from Mike Tyson to Evander Holyfield. Lennox brought home the gold for Canada in the heavyweight division that year as well.

My great uncle Charles, the one who fought for Guyana in 1968, his son Troy Amos-Ross is no joke either. He fought at the 1996 Olympics Games in Atlanta, USA, and the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia. He’s also held most of Canada’s boxing titles and won the 2009 season of the hit boxing television seriesThe Contender. Yes, my family is no joke.

My father and my mom were already divorced when I came along, so I never knew what it was like to have a male as well as a female role model around at the same time or in the same place. My personal opinion on the matter? A mother can teach her son a whole lot of shit, but it takes a man to raise a man. Well, a decent man from my understanding of the definition. I don’