A powerful memoir of what it takes to escape poverty.

Standing on the stage, I felt exposed and like an intruder. In these professional settings, my personal experiences with hunger, poverty, and episodic homelessness, often go undetected. I had worked hard to learn the rules and disguise my beginning in life...

So begins C. Nicole Mason’s powerful memoir, a story of reconciliation, constrained choices and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful, but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school where she excelled.

By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds. The first, a cocoon of familiarity where street smarts, toughness and the ability to survive won the day. The other, foreign and unfamiliar with its own set of rules, also not designed for her success. In her Advanced Placement classes and outside of her neighborhood, she felt unwelcomed and judged because of the way she talked, dressed and wore her hair.

After moving to Las Vegas to live with her paternal grandmother, she worked nights at a food court in one of the Mega Casinos while finishing school. Having figured out the college application process by eavesdropping on the few white kids in her predominantly Black and Latino school, along with the help of a long ago high school counselor, Mason eventually boarded a plane for Howard University, alone and with $200 in her pocket.

While showing us her own path out of poverty, Mason examines the conditions that make it nearly impossible to escape and exposes the presumption harbored by many—that the poor don’t help themselves enough.

Dr. C. Nicole Mason is the Executive Director of the Center for Research and Policy in the Public Interest (CR2PI) and she has taught at Spelman College and New York University. Her writing and commentary has appeared in major newspapers and outlets across the country including MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, Real Clear Politics, the Nation, the Huffington Post, the Progressive, ESSENCE Magazine, the Root, the Grio, the Miami Herald, Democracy Now, and numerous NPR affiliates, among others.

“Readers will find Mason’s absorbing memoir—which would make an excellent book-club selection—to be an interesting take on the issue of entrenched poverty in the U.S.” —Booklist

“This firsthand account of a passage out of poverty will inspire readers interested in the strength of the human spirit in overcoming formidable obstacles.” —Library Journal

“A thoughtful, well-crafted rejoinder to Claude Brown’s half-century-old Manchild in the Promised Land, speaking to the power of hope and the institutional changes needed to make hope possible.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[A] raw and intimate memoir...Mason vividly illustrates the grit, determination, and ‘herculean effort’ necessary to reframe a young life steeped in unyielding poverty.” —Publishers Weekly

“The story of a smart and determined girl fighting her way out of poverty in Los Angeles during the late eighties and early nineties.” —New York Observer