From his own background growing up on the drug-tainted projects of Manhattan, Jose Vilson takes the reader on the coming-of-age story of a naive young man struggling to mature through the first few years of his career, balancing the lows of murder, poverty and academic failure to the highs of growth and triumph. In this collection of essays, he provokes discussion on issues of race, class and education with stories from his classroom seen through the eyes of a Black-Latino educator. Vilson calls for the reclaiming of the education profession while seeking social justice.