How John Singleton's 'Boyz n the Hood' shaped the life of one boy from the hood
"Boyz n the Hood" wasn't the first John Singleton film I saw in theaters - that distinction goes to his 1993 romance "Poetic Justice" - but it's the one that's stayed with me the longest. I spent much of my childhood in fear of the grim statistic that opened the film.
It comes at the film's opening, in the form of a message flashing across the screen before the action begins: "One out of 21 black American
