This Is Not Me

This Is Not Me is a work-in-progress manuscript about a black seventeen-year-old named Jay has nothing to live for but the memory of his grandmother, she was killed protecting him from a police officer when he was seven. When her amethyst necklace, the last thing he has left to remember her by, is snatched by a police officer, an “evil spirit” who looks just like his grandmother appears! She does nothing but reinforce how bleak Jay’s life has been since his grandmother’s death and how he is to blame for everything. Her goal? To destroy the “special spark” that lives inside him. But why?

As he struggles with this new version of his grandmother, who is constantly trying to take over his soul and body; Jay must teach his mother that her vitiligo is beautiful by baking cookies, scream at racist white people who only listen when a gun in his hand, convince his father in front of an audience that his kids are more important than his alcohol, and defend what blackness truly means to the cop that is destined to kill him. Luckily, he is not alone. Jay has friends and family, specifically an encouraging big sister who wants nothing more for him to realize that he is beautiful, he is free and that he is loved. But will he? 

Jay must make a choice; will he succumb to pressures of fear, anger, and pain, letting his soul and spark be consumed? Or will he learn to love himself, move forward in his life and finally learn to live without the only past happiness he’s ever known?