Summary

Chapter 13 is titled “Living While Black Killed My Mom”. The author begins by commenting that he has already started deciding which stories he will be telling at his father’s funeral, but did not have that many to tell about his mother at hers. She died, he says, in 2013 after “an excruciating and goddamn fucking tragic five year stretch” (237) of coping with pain, disease, and other struggles.

The author adds that his lack of stories about his mother is not because he was closer to his father, but because so many of his stories about his mother would reflect badly on his father – stories, for example, about all the things she did to get herself and the family through while he was struggling with a lack of employment. The author remembers this time in his father’s life fondly, as it was the...