From Gutter To Glory

Words touch the core of our souls. They heal the broken hearted and uplift the downtroddened. Chocolate Flavored is an excellent collection of poems and short stories. Through its honest expression of words pretense is nonexistent. A word of encouragement is all that is needed to revive our hearts. Chocolate Flavored, through its poems and short stories, revives. Journey to the island of Jamaica through its collection of poems. Travel to Tobago and Africa. Hear the words hidden in the hearts of men. Be encouraged by spiritual poems. Allow its words to express the thoughts of your mind. Fall in love again. Find yourself again. Begin your journey with Chocolate Flavored-A collection of Poems and Short Stories.

This autobiographical book is the story of the author's experience as a young immigrant from Jamaica. The author details her journey of homelessness after being kicked out of her mother's house. Her journey as a homeless teen on the streets of Brooklyn began after being raped, resulting in a pregnancy that she did not abort. The author chronicles her experience of living on the 'A' line subway, in an abandoned building, and begging for quarters on the streets of Brooklyn to feed her daughter. The author provokes readers' thoughts as she takes readers through various emotions with details of her life as a victim of rape, a teen mother, a hustler, and an abused spouse; eventually turning to God where she sought refuge. She could have let her disastrous journey dictate her future. Instead, she persevered earning a doctorate in health administration and becoming a professor who motivates her students with her story. The intent of the book is to shed light on issues people are ashamed to confront. Each chapter takes readers through the pain felt, but conquered. The author's captivating story is a vivid reminder of the power of God. Despite the turmoil in your life, failures and deceptions, you too, can move from your current situatedness, going From Gutter To Glory!

A true story of my life.

“[An] irreverent and remarkably candid memoir about growing up in wealthy eighties San Francisco . . . rollicking, ruthless . . . ultimately generous-hearted.” —Vogue “A vivid mix of brio, self-awareness and sophistication . . . writing well is indeed the best revenge.” —The New York Times Book Review “A monumental piece of work.” —Kirkus Reviews “In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess.” With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families. Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City) is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse, "eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills." His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms, "You should wash your hands first, before you use the urinal. Not after. Your penis isn't dirty. But your hands are." When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy. With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)—Oh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion.