Grace After Midnight by Felicia “Snoop” Pearson

I’m not hating, but I need you to be able to effectively read aloud whatever book you claim to have written. Second, if your book is sold out in your home city, can you remind folks to go on Amazon and do reviews? Not that reviews are necessarily make or break, but dang. If a bunch of people bought your book, I need you to have more than 18 reviews! And didn’t I see this book on Essence‘s bestseller list? Somebody tell me I’m wrong.

Now that’s all I have to say about it since I don’t want her whoopin’ my ass. I would also like to add that while I don’t own a copy of this book, I’ve seen it on quite a couple “Best of” lists, so . . .

Excerpt:I was born in Baltimore twenty-seven years ago, and then I died—twice. I died both times because my mother was filled with drugs and so was I. Crack babies are messed-up babies, and, according to what the doctors were saying, I didn’t have a prayer.

But they brought me back from death’s door. Someone or something keeps bringing me back from death’s door. I don’t understand it, but maybe writing this book will help me see who I was and who I became. Sometimes I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine myself back then:

A little-bitty baby small enough to fit into the palm of the doctor’s hand, no bigger than a puppy or kitten; a baby who has to be fed with an eye dropper ’cause her mouth is too small for the nipple of a bottle; a baby born cross-eyed due to the drugs running through her system.

A baby born to die. But that same doomed-to-die baby finds a way to live.

How? Why? Sure wasn’t because of Mama. Mama was Loretta Chase. The woman may have wanted me—I can’t know that for sure—but I do know that she couldn’t care for me. Later I learned that Mother was the kind of lady that always kept a drug dealer around to fill her needs. She could do that because she had a pretty face, long wavy hair, and a fine figure. Men flocked to her. My daddy ran from her—or she chased him off. I never did get the story.

I didn’t get a lot of the stories about my real parents. They’re ghost figures in my childhood. I saw them in my dreams when I was a little girl. Sometimes they creep back into my dreams now that I’m a grown woman, but they’re always covered in mystery.

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