Memoir
My memoir, Daughter of the Most High, is about my journey from abandonment to self-acceptance. I am currently seeking agent representation.
In 1988, the year my parents married, I was three years old, an awkward Black girl who idolized TV sitcom families and longed for her father’s acceptance. But my father—a budding minister with a temper, a black belt, and a penchant for quoting Eddie Murphy movies—never folded me into his extended family, including the four children from his previous marriage, who he called “his kids.” When “his kids” came to our house, he quickly left to take them out for ice cream and left me at home feeling unworthy of even an ice cream cone.
When our family moved from Camden, New Jersey to Salisbury, North Carolina in 1991, Dad left “his kids” behind, and I saw it as a chance to deepen our relationship. But one by one by one by one, my half-siblings came to live with us, ignoring me in my own home and shattering my parents’ already-fragile marriage. My father eventually chose his other kids and his church dreams over my mother and me, and I had to learn to forgive him and accept myself. But when Dad passed away weeks before my 30th birthday in 2015, I found myself holding my breath as I walked into his funeral, hoping my siblings would also finally accept me as one of their own.