FINDING CC

'FINDING CC' is a coming-of-age story, the true chronicle of the experience of British journalist Nina Bhadreshwar. Her social awakening begins when she meets a fifteen year old homeless black poet in London, CC, who is later murdered when kicked out of the London night shelter where she is a volunteer. Already desperate with questions and grief after the loss of her mother, Nina realizes she is not the only one in pain and starts her own graffiti and poetry zine, The Real State, in 1992. Nina finds solace in aerosol visions, sound systems and the cadences of rap. She travels across Europe and the USA in her quest to understand the real state and to document the stories of the struggling ethnic youth . It's during a stay in New York that she encounters someone already at it in the positive energy of Tupac Shakur and they start a penpal correspondence. Decamping to California's ghettos in November 1994, Nina finally settles in Watts and publishes another edition which finds its way to Death Row Records. She is hired to be its chief editor and memo writer to get a media-averse brand moving. Using its proximity to Interscope Records, Nina sends packages of fan mail, news and poems to Tupac in jail and cannot understand why he cannot bail himself out, having seen his royalty statements. Nina feels she has found a family and stability at last and that Death Row is the future. But just as she is starting to feel secure, she discovers things are not quite right - in fact, they are very, very wrong. But getting out alive is a privilege most aren't ready to pay. Now the despair and the robbery is not just personal; it's corporate and cannot be so easily dismissed. But Nina is a nobody so who is going to do something about it and how? This is the story of growing up from personal angst to social responsibility and the stories of countless young people struggling against the odds to survive to adulthood.