By the time Breezy was 14, she had two baby girls and had just discovered crack cocaine. Karen Chilton’s superb narration enhances Brenda Myers-Powell’s memoir. Her parents died, her neighborhood was tough, and her grandmother loved her but couldn’t always protect her. It wasn’t a sad life, and Chilton orchestrates the laugh-out-loud moments like a seasoned conductor. For example, when Breezy was shot in the toe through a brand-new pair of shoes, she refused to take them off until she got to the hospital. This is a full-bodied performance, complete with salty language and harrowing situations, but listeners will love Chilton’s portrayal of Breezy’s determination to find her place in the world. E.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

★ 04/26/2021

Myers-Powell pulls no punches in her piercing debut, an account of how she got out of a life of prostitution and drug use, and used the experience to get others off the street. In 1997, after a run-in with a john who hit her and dragged her with his car, she landed in the hospital pummeled so badly that, she writes, “I didn’t have no face.” At age 39, that was a wake-up call for Myers-Powell—who got clean soon after and has been advocating for victims of sex trafficking ever since. But it wasn’t the first time she’d suffered at the hands of another man. Raised by an alcoholic grandmother in Chicago, she was sexually abused at a young age by her uncle and his friends. By the time she turned 14, she was addicted to crack and working as a prostitute to support her two infants. In the 25 years that followed, she was stabbed 13 times and shot five times. “Folks tell me, ain’t all that happen to you,” she writes. “I wish to God I was lying my head off.” Myers-Powell isn’t shy describing her gritty past (“I done seen some girls do some pretty awful things...that crack had tore my ass up”) and the delivery is stirring. This page-turner impresses from start to finish. (June)

Though often devastating, her frank, revealing account is nevertheless infused with warmth, optimism, and hope.”
—Chicago Review of Books

“Myers-Powell inspires readers to root for her as she climbs back to control her own life and become a forceful advocate for fellow survivors.”
—The National Book Review

“If you want a tale that'll drop your jaw every few pages, Leaving Breezy Street is the book to get out.”
—The Miami Times

“Myers-Powell pulls no punches in her piercing debut . . . stirring. This page-turner impresses from start to finish.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“It’s a book that balances hard truths about growing up poor, Black and female in Chicago with the hope that is inherent in Brenda’s extraordinary life story. Playing against survival-memoir type, Leaving Breezy Street is also deeply, genuinely funny.”
—Anne K. Ream, Newcity

“Myers-Powell’s book is a stunning debut; a heartfelt memoir about turning her life around. . . . Told by Myers-Powell with threads of joy and humor woven throughout.”
—Chicago Crusader

“Throughout a life of uphill battles, abuse, and hustling, Myers-Powell has managed to retain her humor, attitude, and fight, all on full display in this stirring memoir. . . . Graphic but never gratuitous, Leaving Breezy Street is engaging and candid. Those who like gritty memoirs will relish it, and it is a perfect nonfiction crossover for urban fiction readers.”
—Booklist

“An earnest memoir of life on the mean streets by the founder of a survivors group. . . . The author’s story, co-written by Reynolds, is consistently frank and often shocking.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“[T]he empowering, steely and emotional update on Myers-Powell’s life today, [is] a tale-within-a-tale that’ll make you teary-eyed. . . . If you want a tale that’ll drop your jaw every few pages, Leaving Breezy Street is the book to get out.”
—Washington Informer

“Brenda Myers-Powell’s story is testament that there are, indeed, second acts in life. Her journey as told in Leaving Breezy Street is remarkable, if not chilling, as she faces a cascade of violence and betrayal, mostly at the hands of men. But astonishingly she never loses her verve or her humor, and emerges on the other side not only intact but as an inspiration.”
—Alex Kotlowitz, author of An American Summer, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize

“Through all the love that she’s missed on, Brenda Myers-Powell gives hope. She is a voice for the voiceless. Also she’s funny, she’s intense, she’s retained her soul, and redemption turns her into a potential leader of the most needed kind: she’s real. I hope that the light that Brenda allowed through reaches you too.”
—Mariane Pearl, author of A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Daniel Pearl

“Brenda Myers-Powell has a powerful and true story. From poverty, prostitution and jail, she struggled to become an advocate for trafficked women, a public speaker and now, the author of this deeply moving and amazing book chronicling her unbelievable journey to new life. A testimony to human possibilities in the face of great odds. It’s hard to put down.”
—Edwina Gately, author of I Hear a Seed Growing

“To stand in one truth and allow yourself to be seen is one of the bravest things an individual can do. In her memoir, Brenda Myers-Powell is brave, authentic, and a bit gritty in a remarkable way. At every moment in Leaving Breezy Street you felt you were there, experiencing the pain and finding the resilience to keep pushing to find joy through it all alongside her.”
—Marcus Samuelsson, author of Yes, Chef: A Memoir

01/01/2021

Host of the popular advice column "¡Hola Papi!" on Substack, Brammer offers a memoir-in-essays, tracking what it's like to grow up as a queer, mixed-race Chicano kid in America's heartlands (75,000-copy first printing). In The Profession, originally scheduled for fall 2020 and written with Turnaround coauthor Knobler, Bratton tracks a career that led to his being police commissioner in New York City. Burns proclaims Where You Are Is Not Who You Are, sharing where she's been and what she's learned as the first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company (75,000-copy first printing). Former teen model Diamond (Naked Rome) reveals a childhood both wacky and cliff-hanging in Nowhere Girl; on the run with an outlaw family, she lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities, by age nine (50,000-copy first printing). Twitter-famous Henderson offers The Ugly Cry to tell us about being raised Black in a mostly white community by tough grandparents after her mother abandoned her. Today show news anchor Melvin uses Pops to explore issues of race and fatherhood while recalling his own dad (100,000-copy first printing). Founder of Chicago's Dreamcatcher Foundation, which assists young people in disadvantaged areas, Myers-Powell recalls a childhood fractured by her mother's death and a life of pimps and parties before finally Leaving Breezy Street (75,000-copy first printing). Growing up scary smart if poor and emotionally unsupported, James Edward Plummer renamed himself Hakeem Muata Oluseyi to honor his African heritage and now leads A Quantum Life as a NASA physicist. In House of Sticks, Tran recalls leaving Vietnam as a toddler in 1993 and growing up in Queens, helping her mom as a manicurist and eventually graduating from Columbia (100,000-copy first printing). In As a Woman, Williams, a celebrated speaker on gender equity and LGTBQ+ issues, describes the decision to transition from male to female as a 60-year-old husband, father, and pastor (60,000-copy first printing).

By the time Breezy was 14, she had two baby girls and had just discovered crack cocaine. Karen Chilton’s superb narration enhances Brenda Myers-Powell’s memoir. Her parents died, her neighborhood was tough, and her grandmother loved her but couldn’t always protect her. It wasn’t a sad life, and Chilton orchestrates the laugh-out-loud moments like a seasoned conductor. For example, when Breezy was shot in the toe through a brand-new pair of shoes, she refused to take them off until she got to the hospital. This is a full-bodied performance, complete with salty language and harrowing situations, but listeners will love Chilton’s portrayal of Breezy’s determination to find her place in the world. E.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

2021-05-04
An earnest memoir of life on the mean streets by the founder of a survivors group.

As the book opens, Myers-Powell, a former prostitute and drug addict, has just moved to Gary, Indiana, to live with her brother, who had moved from their native Chicago after he was robbed, and to try to pull her life back together. “I left my family twelve years before as a drop-dead beauty,” she writes, “and came back a messed-up crackhead.” Her world was one of shattered families and low expectations. Raised by a mean-spirited grandmother and pregnant early in her teenage years, Myers-Powell became a prostitute simply to survive. She was frequently raped and robbed by “gorilla pimps,” who “are brutal [and] can get creative with their violence.” Throughout the author’s early life, violence surrounded her (“Nobody was left in the house alive except a three-year-old baby. Some cold-blooded shit—they killed everybody. Shot them all in the head”). One by one, her friends on the streets fell victim to a Hobbesian world, and it was the same wherever she went: New Orleans, Los Angeles, rural truck stops in Indiana, back to Chicago, back and forth. Myers-Powell sometimes expresses defiant pride (“I was the baddest ho out there”) that she managed to free herself of her pimps and run her own show: “Being a prostitute and making money meant I was in control. I bought my own shit and smoked where I wanted to.” Still, after having spent time in California prisons, “stabbed thirteen times and shot five times” over the years, and finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she turned her life around and helped others like her, co-founding the Dreamcatcher Foundation, which fights trafficking and sexual exploitation. The author’s story, co-written by Reynolds, is consistently frank and often shocking, which may deter some readers.

A gritty and relentlessly grim survivor’s tale, certainly not for tender sensibilities.