I've loved Staceyann's poetry ever since I ran across her performance of "If Only Out of Vanity" on YouTube and this autobiography of hers just makes me like her even more. This was a hard read, not because of how it is written, but because she had a hard, hard life. The poverty, the abandonment by both her parents, the abuse by the relatives forced to take her in, the constant threat of rape from the cousins she was forced to live with, and eventually having to make her way on her own while still in high school would probably have crushed me. But she not only managed to develop a strong sense of self, but put herself through college and strike out on her own in America. And she's a fantastic poet!

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