Backstory: The Many Lives of Granville Johnson

IN THIS UNFORGETTABLE MEMOIR, author Granville Johnson recounts his roller-coaster life growing up in Chicago's Westside ghetto in the 1950s and '60s. Anchored by his mother's love and his own ambition and self-assurance, Granville contends with constant trauma, including fluke accidents, illness, the death of loved ones, institutionalized racism, violent gangs, and repeated sexual assault.

While the legacy of that sexual assault becomes the one nemesis that Granville never fully defeats, he uses the pages of this inspiring book to remind others who have experienced similar assaults that what was done to them does not define them. Traumatic experiences definitely leave their mark, but as Granville so eloquently articulates, positive experiences and influences -like his mother-do as well.