SAINT LOUIS NATIVE SOURING TO NEW HEIGHTS AFTER PRISON

[Ronn Nichols]

Ex-Con Writes The Stories Society Is Afraid To Face: Abuse, Rape, Adultery and Pain
Released from prison in 2004, St. Louis native and author Allysha Hamber set out to give society, especially women, a taste of real life for a African American woman, growing up in the ghetto of a dangerous city. After serving a seven and a half year prison term for assault, Allysha began giving voice to silent victims of incest, sexual assault, torture and the homicide of young girl’s self esteem everywhere. “I wanted the world to know that underneath all the fancy clothes, the heavy make-up and fame, lies a black woman, who has more than likely been a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a family member. I wanted the “fake” to come of and expose the “real”, starting with myself. I felt that maybe that would give other young girls the courage to come forward if they knew they were not alone.”

Allysha Lynne Hamber is an established St. Louis Author, whose inaugural book, “The NorthSide Clit,” has sold out on the East coast. Allysha’s self-published, debut novel, “Keep It On The Down Low, No One Has To Know,” is still rising to the top of the Urban Street Novel charts. She now has two more novels under her belt. “What’s Done in the Dark,” and the latest, “Unlovable Bitch, A Hoe is Born,” which tells the graphic details of abuse, molestation and prostitution from inside the mind of a young girl. Allysha began her writing career behind the walls of a Federal Prison. It was inside the solitude of the institution, that Allysha began sharing her past of emotional, physical and sexual abuse with the women of the institution. It was her fellow inmates that both encouraged and inspired Allysha to share her testimony with the world through writing. Allysha began writing plays of both raw and uncut abuse stories for her fellow inmates to perform. The reviews were so intense and demanding, in 2002, the Camp Administrator authorized Allysha and an inmate production crew to perform a play for the Warden, staff and their families and outside guests, the first in the facility’s history. With an continuous ear to the street and the vision to use the past as a roadway to the future, Allysha brings a voice to a multi-generational group of women that no longer can be ignored, turning helpless to hope, molestation to mercy, violation to vision, suffering to success and pain to promise.