An educator’s memoir chronicles growing up in Black Detroit.

As an educator, Murphy has seen firsthand “the beauty, and ugliness, of life,” particularly in the experiences of his Black students. He recalls one pupil who was caught smoking marijuana at school. After seeing the anguish on the student’s face when his mother warned him about “ending up like his father,” the author decided to write this book. Murphy wanted to recount his own struggles to overcome the pain of growing up with an absentee father and grappling with his racial identity in America. This story focuses on an average Black youngster growing up in 1970s Detroit whose unassuming life included a stern mother with an acerbic tongue (a “vulgar Shakespeare”) and an extended family known by an assortment of nicknames. While many chapters explore the morose urban life of the ’70s, including learning the “rules of survival” and earning “Hood credibility,” some of the book’s strongest moments address the innocence of childhood. For example, after being shot in the eye with a BB gun that nearly left him blind, the author recounts that his most vivid memory was wondering about the tooth fairy after losing a tooth while under anesthesia. The second half of the work centers on Murphy’s academic experiences, beginning with a “liberating” stint at Grand Rapids Community College, where he earned a reputation as a “militant” after serving as vice president of the Black Student Union. The author would go on to Morgan State University in Baltimore, where he had a daughter with a girlfriend whose early death would leave him a single father.

Murphy’s story is a compelling coming-of-age tale of a successful educator and loving father who surmounted obstacles and tragedy. But along with the memoir’s immensely readable narrative are passages of poetic reflections on Black life in America. The book’s descriptions of Detroit, where “every day” the author “lost a little more humanity and compassion,” and his debilitating “white folk fatigue” are particularly poignant. Equally potent is his defense of historically Black colleges and universities, whose value transcends academic rankings. They provided Murphy a curriculum centered on “pride about what my people—African people—had done,” teaching him lessons about the African diaspora that were completely ignored in his public school classes. Though the memoir’s message is one of triumph, Murphy does not shy away from his own mistakes, particularly his failed relationships with women. Indeed, humanity in all its complexity—from complicated relationships with parents to embarrassing sexual escapades—seeps from every page. The book’s title, which harkens to an episode in the author’s life as a 6-year-old boy when he was rebuked by his mother for wanting to be an astronaut, reflects the story’s approach of avoiding romanticizing the past while not wallowing in its unfairness. Despite living a life that could have easily broken him, Murphy constantly reminds readers (as he does his students) of their own agency in choosing “to be a victim or a victor.” Some may consider the volume’s warning not to “blame white people” or “the system” counterproductive to ongoing conversations about systemic racism. But this work is a testimony to both the destructiveness of racism and the strength of Murphy’s resiliency.

A powerful, sometimes poetic account of Black life in America.