Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.Sample Book Insights: #1 I was 14 when my stepfather died. I dropped out of high school after that, and spent the year going to movies with my friends. I was into the movies, and I snacked on purses and shoplifted.#2 My mother, who was divorced from my father, was very odd. She would ride her bicycle around our neighborhood, ignoring the stares of passersby. She was completely nonchalant about the danger she was in from both blacks and whites who disliked her for being a white person in a black world.#3 My mother was a strange woman. She never cared to socialize with our neighbors. She drank tea out of a glass. She could speak Yiddish. She had an absolute distrust of authority and an insistence on complete privacy which seemed to make her and her family even odder.#4 I was terrified to go to school, but my mother would walk me to the bus stop every afternoon and pick me up after I got off the bus. She would stand on the corner of New Mexico and 114th Road, watching with the other parents as the yellow school bus came around the corner.