This book is a collection of stories about a Black girl growing up in Boston during busing and beyond. It exposes facets of the lived Black experience of hundreds of women I know and meet on the internet in groups about Black Gen Xers. There are no other books like it, which is why I wrote this.

I am the person to write this because my varied life experiences have combined to make a strange, beautiful, and painful life. I was raised outside of Boston where I was not bussed, but where racial tensions still ran high. I experienced many instances of harassment and discrimination that caused me to love learning but to hate school. I was always so vulnerable there and I could not leave. Summers were in the projects with all my 10+ cousins at their day camp program while my parents worked, and then we went home and read books. We went to church 4 times a week and went for family vacations down South where we went to church 6 times a week for Homecoming. I had ballet and piano lessons, recitals, and functions. I never played a sport in my life.

I've been teaching since 1992; in elementary, primary, and middle school. I have been an administrator for 12 years. What I came to learn was that it was the intersection of my race, gender, age, and size that threatened people. I am in my late 50s, plus size, and grown. I say it like it is and have no time for foolishness. Not everyone can handle that–which is their problem until you are their leader and trying to shift the culture, and then it becomes yours to fix. I am the first Black teacher, colleague, and employee for almost all districts where I worked.

I do not have a brand or many connections. I wrote a professional book for principals called Girl, Breathe and started using Tiktok to try to get a social media presence to create a following, but too many nasty men followed me, so I stopped that. I have written for NPR and VPR and the local newspaper. I had a spot in a multi-writer column called “Life Here”. Because I once called uniforms costumes, I was challenged to write a sports column. I wrote about how much I did not know about sports. I wrote a series for children about a Black girl with undiagnosed ADHD named Maisy.I have had an offer from two small publishing houses.