This profusely illustrated book was compiled and researched by the author from 1994 to 1996 in the San Francisco Bay area. It is "an attempt to understand graffiti by tracing its genealogical roots through the past and into its present transformation...For many graffiti writers, graffiti is a secret language, an empowering form of self expression, an urban calligraphy of the oppressed, a screaming political expression of outrage and protest against an unjust and alienating political-economic order...For individuals and groups on the fringes of society, power and value manifest themselves through the symbols of a better world and the ecstasies of creative/destructive ritual transgression...[The graffiti writers] understand the surreal dreamlike images of their art as ideological statements and symbolic transformative instruments for initiating social change." As one artist stated, "In hip-hop culture, graffiti is our written language, that's our hieroglyphics, our fonts." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.