Overview

This memoir tells the story of Steven Drayton, a white-presenting Black man from Boston who grew up during the Civil Rights Era with the painful feeling of being too Black to be accepted by white people and too white to be accepted by Black people. Raised in a family of drug addicts and criminals, with little educational support and no role models, he made it to college but couldn't graduate, became a father but couldn't parent, and became drawn into the life of crime he erroneously associated with authentic Black American identity. He became a criminal and a pimp, and loved the power this gave him. He began to use drugs like many of his family members, and loved the numbing escape drugs provided. After being imprisoned for years, he underwent a unique transformation. The book is a blend of humor, history, social commentary, trauma, intimate family chronicle, and redemption story, with themes relevant not just to Boston life but American life more broadly. It provides a personal glimpse at the impact of segregation in housing and education. It elucidates the complexity of criminal behavior without reducing the subject's path to a single moral choice.

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