The memoir begins with Shanna Red expressing what she believes is the duty of family; this early theme sets the tone of the work. There is very little family responsibility illustrated in Wilson’s memoir. The reader meets a young Shanna, born into a family with an addicted mother; due to their neglect, she and her brother are placed into foster care. This happens due to another’s greed. In her first foster home Shanna and her brother Carl are mentally and physically abused by adults who are responsible for them. This abuse continues until a rebellious moment when both Shanna and Carl strike back. Shanna’s childhood struggles with school, friendship, the foster care system, and the color conscious society she exists in foreshadows the work. The reader is spared little of the painful details that shaped Shashanna Wilson. One hopes for her rescue, but what one witnesses her survival. The environment that Shanna survives as a child is painful to experience as a reader, but there are moments of genuine love between her and her brother that warms the heart. These warm moments are short lived due to the separation of the two. Shanna’s struggle with drug addiction is second only to the struggle with family; throughout the work she is longing for a family to belong, but this desire is unfulfilled due to the foster families being created for profit, which is how she describes the foster homes she was placed in. What saves Wilson is a dependence on self. She looks within for strength and finds it. She breaks free of the murk in which exist through education, drug rehabilitation programs, planning, and a developed belief in a higher power. The goal of passing the GED lays a strategy for her life. If nothing else, a young Shanna Red learned how to set goals and accomplish them.
