INTRODUCTION
Don’t tell nobody our business.” This was the mantra my She-daddy (mom) drilled into me before I even started school. I never interrogated it—we didn’t have anything to hide, and it’s not like I had anything noteworthy to share. Our circumstances were my normal. Things that were tough about our lives were reasons, she said, to prove Them wrong.
Them were ubiquitous and circumstantial. At times Them were my teachers, at times Them was society at large, at times—as far as young me was concerned—Them was She-daddy herself. Our business, and by extension my story, never occurred to me as a reason that I wouldn’t do well. She-daddy just stressed that I would have to work twice as hard to succeed. Our business became my secret source of strength. Whatever milestone I passed, only my family knew the full distance I’d traveled to the finish line.
By the start of my senior year of high school, as a seventeen-year-old, I had found another reason to keep things to myself. I didn’t want to be just my story, our business, my origins. (Still don’t.) I didn’t want to be a statistic. Truthfully, I was ashamed of some parts, of how it all started for us. The poverty, the single parenthood, the struggle all sounded like a stereotypical sob story, and I resolved not to tell it.
Only thing was—I wanted an A in drama class. That summer I had immersed myself in books about the college admissions process, dreaming about hazy green lawns far from Stockton. Every book and article stressed the same thing: that grades and test scores weren’t enough, you had to give them a sense of who you were. My drama teacher, Mr. Motroni, offered extra credit that fall: enter an essay contest hosted by Alice Walker, responding to the prompt “How I changed my own life.” Here was an opportunity to knock out two birds with one stone: get my grade up, and practice for my college admissions essay. I could tell just a little bit of my story, maybe.
As I started writing, I felt as though I was taking a huge inhale and exhale. Finally, I had an outlet to record the experience of my mom’s omnipresence and my dad’s absence. I smiled as my pen described my mom’s strength and determination, how she had given birth when she was my age and had never left me since. I didn’t want to embarrass her, but I decided to include this stuff anyway. It was because she only had a high school education, after all, that I was writing this essay, that I was trying to gain acceptance to the best schools in the country.
I struggled with whether to actually mention my father. Nobody outside of my immediate family knew why he wasn’t around. My explanation changed each time I was asked—I didn’t know who he was, or he moved out of state, or he was dead. All of these were lies. In the end, I opened my essay with the truth: “The first time I saw my father, he was chained.” My father was in prison and wasn’t getting out anytime soon.
The ink flowed. I wrote about growing up in Stockton, I wrote about the lessons I had learned from my parents. I wrote about how my dreams were incubated in their disappointments and nightmares. I wrote about the context of racism and classism I was just beginning to understand, without which neither my mother’s perseverance nor my father’s shame made sense to me, and against the tides of which I had accomplished everything I had so early in my life. I wrote about fighting against the soft bigotry of low expectations. It would take me years more to process it all (and I’m still processing!), but I had the first inklings then that my “business” was part of something much bigger. That my “business” was a source of strength and was worthy to be spoken of.
More than a decade later, I understand that stories are important because, They overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Our testimonies are sources of pride and reservoirs of strength. Storytelling—truth-telling—is how we make sense of the world as it is and gain the vision and courage to create the world as it should be.
In that vein, I see my calling not as a political one, but as a narrative one. I am more a griot than a politician and, to quote my favorite rapper, J. Cole: “My story ain’t the only story I’m trying to tell.” The aim of this book and of my work is to share what deserves to be shouted from the rooftops. Trauma and triumph. Pain and purpose. A story of Stockton and cities like it. Of policy failures. Of growing up Black and poor in post-Reagan America. Of being the path-breaking mayor of a major American city during the Trump presidency. Of mass incarceration. The story of my mom, my aunt, and grandmother, and countless single mothers like them. The story of my father. A story of progress and of pitfalls. A story of making history. My story.
I won that essay contest, by and by. In one of the many lucky, surreal turns my life has taken, I got to meet Ms. Alice Walker, who gave me some words I’ll never forget. She helped me realize that my life is not a sob story, but a survivor’s tale.
Thank you, Alice Walker. And thank you, for reading on.
1
SHE-DADDY’S SON
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, familiar with pain.
My voice faltered. I looked down, tried to power through it, but I suddenly felt too overwhelmed to finish the passage. I stood before hundreds of congregants on the biggest Sunday of the year, Easter, my face wet with tears. I was eleven, and I wasn’t crying because I was nervous, or because I had messed up. I was crying because it, the story of Jesus, was messed up. When I had practiced this passage with my mom, I’d kept my emotions in check. I saved my tears for when I missed a word, which carried the threat of a quick lash of the belt.
Before the congregation, however, the tears flowed freely. The injustice, the grief—the loneliness of it all.
Yet it was our pain that he bore,
our sufferings he endured.
In Sunday School, four years prior, we were given short verses to memorize for the Christmas program from Luke, chapter 2. Sister Kim gave me Luke 2:1–3, but when I had committed that to memory I decided to read more. The next Sunday during class, I eagerly raised my hand and told Sister Kim that I had memorized not just my verse, but verses 1–14.
To humor me or to call my bluff, she asked me to recite it on the spot, which I did. “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus…” The account of Jesus’ birth. After church, Sister Kim told Pastor Alfred what I’d done, and he had me recite it for the Christmas program in front of the entire congregation. I was seven years old and terrified of all the people looking at me, but the words just flowed. I received a standing ovation. Pastor Alfred took up an offering, and gave me the money.
Copyright © 2021 by Michael Tubbs