MSI Press Blog

Excerpt: First Pain Through the years, Binta often told people I was her “first pain.” I assumed it was because I was her first born, but the more I thought about it, I was not her primal pain. She was in pain long before I came along. As a child, I recall her telling me many times that she was the “black sheep” of her family. By my observation, she was a copper-colored, smooth-skinned beauty with dark, inquisitive eyes and long, thick hair. Knowing her siblings as I do, she may have seemed like a prickly-know-it-all in her conversations with them.       Binta also made statements to me, questioning her parentage, saying, “My aunt I got named after is really my birth mother.” She never said why she thought that. Other times, she’d say about her mother, my Nana, Dia Mae Black, “She didn’t love me; in fact, I think she hated me. That’s the reason my family and me seemed like a poor fit.” How awful! What a mindset to have about your own mother and family members!       Throug

  Exceprt from It Only Hurts When I Can't Run 23. Belt in te Face By the time I was twelve, in the seventh grade, and still under Miss Taylor’s thumb, our relationship had slowly deteriorated. It wasn’t completely my fault. It began with Miss Taylor being preoccupied with her friendship with one of her church sisters, Mrs. Manor, forcing me into give-and-take with the two Manor girls my age; fortunately, I could ignore the Manor boys.       The Manor family lived in Sebring’s country outskirts. Miss Taylor would take me, Jon, and any other kids in her temporary care to the country. The county scents that changed from sweet to foul, depending on where you stood in the yard, surprised and invigorated me. Dodging snorting pigs and running after chickens (or from them, in my case, because I thought they were crazed beasts) put a lot of glee into the day. Playing in a smelly trailer hidden in the woods made it seem like we had our own personal house. Eating fried sweet potatoes, rather