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Back The Chosen One Save as PDF
Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. PART I
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  15. PART II
  16. CHAPTER TWELVE
  17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  19. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  20. PART III
  21. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  22. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  23. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  24. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. AFTERWORD
  34. DISCUSSION GUIDE QUESTIONS
  35. A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
  36. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  37. Discover More
  38. About the Author
  39. Praise for

Tiny specks that look like dust. All the memories. Rising out of the bodies, past and present. So much sorrow and despair, with roots that go all the way down to the bottom of time. A line, a matrix of generational pain. A legacy of suffering. Inescapable. Birthed again and again until someone heals it. Until someone has the power to heal it.

Massa beats Carol Ann for dropping the honey pot. Her back takes months to heal. Massa sells Lewis’s pa to a plantation down South. Lewis never sees him again. The bottle is his only comfort. It’s not rape if she’s a Black savage. It’s giving her what she deserves. So Massa takes her body freely whenever he wants.
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My mother’s mother beats her with an extension cord for leaving the bathroom light on because “money don’t grow on trees.” My grandfather walks off to start sharecropping in the fields when my father is only five. My father, a child, runs after him until he can’t see him no more. He’ll wait all night for a ghost that will never return. Only the brown liquor soothes his aching soul. My mother’s stepfather taking my mother’s body freely whenever he wants, like he’s been taught. The Black woman’s body, meant to be taken.
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Mom beats Dre, Rone, and me for burning roaches. Scars, just like Carol Ann’s, wrap around our tiny thighs. Dre inherits the family legacy of finding comfort in the bottle to escape, like Lewis and our father. Dre’s little eyes watch and learn early that this is the way to salvation. Now he knows how to feel nothing. Little Echo, next in line for the taking. This time by the whiskey man down the street and a wolf in sheep’s clothing who calls himself prince.

We transform into diamonds, shining. New. The last of the light leaves me. I don’t know if it will ever return.

I’ve never seen my family like this. Weightless. Unburdened. Without their pain.

“I love y’all,” Dre says. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

A crumbling. We fade to dust. Our living flesh dissolves into particles of sand. I watch them blow away until I myself disintegrate back into nothingness.

PART III

The Rise

Even though the rise is always prophesized, it is never promised. Many factors must be coordinated to ensure a Chosen One answers the call. Willingness to escape the bud is critical. The potential is always there to transform from a caterpillar to a butterfly, but one must endure the crushing pressures of growth. Wings can only be earned. Once flight is made possible, ascension is guaranteed.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN