Chapter I Mother Nature's Son 1 -- Chapter II I Am a Small Republic 9 -- Chapter III Tragic Mulatto 25 -- Chapter IV The Birth of Cool 36 -- Chapter V Better the Devil You Know 51 -- Chapter VI Restless Natives 68 -- Chapter VII Not Waving but Drowning 90 -- Chapter VIII Harvest Home 108 -- Chapter IX The Serpent's Tooth 133 -- Chapter X The Stations of the Cross 149 -- Chapter XI Faking the Funk 166 -- Chapter XII Dearly Beloved 226 -- Chapter XIII Ace in the Hole 243 -- Chapter XIV The Crossing 255 -- Chapter XV Rebel Without a Pause 268 -- Chapter XVI The Heart of the World 279 -- Chapter XVII Home Come the Angels 296.
Summary
In a memoir of identity and ethnicity, the author describes growing up with his black activist father and his own white skin, the abandonment of his mother, and his life spent caught between two worlds.