Booker T. Washington, the son of a slave woman and a white man, recounts his rise from slavery to become the most influential black leader of his time in the U.S., and founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

"'Standing on the stage, I felt exposed and like an intruder. In these professional settings, my personal experiences with hunger, poverty, and episodic homelessness, often go undetected. I had worked hard to learn the rules and disguise my beginning in life...' So begins C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, a story of reconciliation, constrained choices and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was...