Money-Grip
By
Divine G
The novel I wrote behind the walls
The one my fellow prisoners lined up to have me sign
Before Hollywood knew my name, Money-Grip was my second published novel — written and published while I was locked up. Guys had their families buy it, they read it, and it got popular on Rikers Island. Men would walk up to me in the yard or the mess hall and ask me to sign their copy. It got a whole lot of them reading.
Years later, that same life became the A24 film Sing Sing — where Colman Domingo earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor playing me. I earned an Oscar nomination as one of the writers, and I helped make the film as an executive producer. And in one scene, I step in front of the camera to ask my own on-screen self to autograph a copy of this exact book.
Money-Grip isn't a spin-off of the movie. It's the book that was there the whole time.
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THE STORY BEHIND THE BOOK
I wrote and published Money-Grip while I was still inside — my second published novel, after Enigma of Love. Because it was a real book, guys could have their families buy it. They'd read it, then walk up to me in the yard or the mess hall and ask me to sign it. It got popular on Rikers Island — men were even coming up to Sing Sing already knowing the book, looking for me. It pushed a whole segment of the prison to start reading. That meant everything.
I never planned to be a writer. I started because the courts gave me no relief for a crime I didn't commit, so I picked up a pen to tell the world the truth about what happened to me. That fight is still going — but the writing is what carried me through it.
So when the cameras came for Sing Sing — the film that earned three Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor for Colman Domingo playing me — I didn't just watch it happen. I helped make it, as an executive producer, and I share its Oscar-nominated writing credit. And it felt right that I'd step into a scene and ask the man portraying me to autograph Money-Grip — this book. A full circle you couldn't write if you tried.
Money-Grip is where it started.
About Money-Grip
Money is God in Rasheen Smith's world. It's the only thing that can save his crack-addicted mother, free his little brother, and lift them out of the Brooklyn the Hood that's eating them alive. So when a scheming kingpin turns Rasheen's first kill into a lifelong debt, the seventeen-year-old stick-up artist does the only thing he knows how to do — he takes. Spots, stash houses, mansions, lives.
From the projects of Bed-Stuy to the prison yards of upstate New York, through betrayal after betrayal, Rasheen claws toward the two things he can't live without: revenge and riches. He'll get his hands on both. But the grip that money has on a man is a grip that never loosens — not for family, not for love, and not for one dime.
Raw. Relentless. Unforgettable. A ferocious street saga written from inside the world it portrays.
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About John "Divine G" Whitfield
John "Divine G" Whitfield is a novelist and playwright whose writing career began — and flourished — while he was incarcerated. A founding member of Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) — the prison arts program at the heart of Sing Sing — he first picked up a pen during a wrongful imprisonment, to tell the world the truth about his case. Behind the walls he published an acclaimed body of work, including the novels Enigma of Love,
Money-Grip, and Baby Doll, plus short fiction and drama in national anthologies — earning four PEN Awards and the Tacenda Literary Award — five national writing awards in all — and a citation by the United Nations for his advocacy of education in detention. His life
and work are the basis of the A24 film Sing Sing, which received three Academy Award nominations — including Best Actor for Colman Domingo, who portrays him. Whitfield is credited as one of the film's Oscar-nominated writers and as an executive producer,
making him one of the first two formerly incarcerated Rehabilitation Through the Arts alumni ever nominated for an Academy Award. In the film, he cameos asking Domingo to autograph his novel Money-Grip.
Today he is the founder of Divine G Entertainment, and he has adapted both Money-Grip and Money-Grip 2 into feature screenplays, now being brought to producers. His full catalog is at his Amazon author page.
Divine G continues to fight for exoneration with the Deskovic Foundation. Learn more and add your name at freedivineg.org.