This sassy, shocking autobiographical novel from the author of Uptown Dreams captures the racial tensions, the hardships, and the bonds that formed between families and neighbors growing up poor in Harlem.

You’d be angry, too, if you grew up poorer than poor in Harlem in the 1960s and ’70s, a place of unrelenting violence, racism, crime, rape, scamming, drinking, and drugging. Living with a dad permanently checked out in Bellevue and a mom at the end of her rope raising you, your twin sister, and your two brothers, moving every time the money runs out—and doing what it takes to survive.

But there’s more to her story. Ke-Ke Quinones was whip smart and sassy, a voracious reader of everything from poetry to the classics. No matter what, 117th Street—where you could always count on someone to stand up for you—would always be home. And with every hard-knock lesson learned, Ke-Ke grew fiercer, unleashing her inner angry-ass black woman to get through it all.

Decades later, comatose in a hospital bed after a medical crisis, she reflects on her life—her success as a journalist and renowned author, her tragicomic memories of Harlem, her turbulent marriage, the birth of her daughter, future possibilities—all the while surrounded by her splintered family in all of their sound and fury. Will she rise above once more?