For many American children, childhood is a time of innocence and security. Unfortunately for the author, her childhood wasn't filled with particularly much of either. In fact, it was defined by two very different things: poverty and police.
The author's impoverished upbringing in 1990s Los Angeles was typical of many Black American childhoods at the time.
Her mother was a single parent and spent sixteen hours a day working multiple jobs. Despite all her hard work, she sometimes still couldn't afford food for her children. The author recalls that there was often only cereal to be had. Indeed, for over a year, they didn't even have milk for their cereal, because their slum landlord refused to replace their broken refrigerator/ They made do with water.
Even when they could afford more nutritious food, there were few places in the neighborhood to get it. In fact, the only place that sold groceries was a 7-Eleven convenience store. Other than that, the only outlets to buy food or drink were a liquor store and fast-food joints. In other words, with so little money and so few choices, the author's mother struggled to keep her children supplied with enough healthy, nurturing meals.
In addition to poverty, the author and her siblings were forced to contend with a continual police presence in their neighborhood. Whereas many white communities perceive the police as existing to protect and serve them, the author learned early on that the law enforcement's objective in Black communities is to harass and control them. At the tender age of nine, the author witnessed her 12-year-old brother and his friends being thrown up against the wall by police officers, before being partially stripped and searched. What were the boys doing to warrant his suspicion? They were simply talking in an alleyway, next to the author's house. After that incident, the police began arresting the author's teenage brothers on a regular basis. Although her mother eventually moved her family to another area of the city to try to shield her sons from the attention of law enforcement, they were still regularly harassed by the police, and their mother realized there was very little she could do to protect her sons.
