What's the one area from your past that you keep getting your flesh caught in over and over again? Where are you still wounded and bleeding? The good news is that the most unanticipated and rewarding turns in the story often start with the ugliest beginnings.

Growing Up Ugly is an inspirational coming-of-age memoir that traces the upbringing of a painfully shy child with chronically low self-esteem-a Black boy reprimanded for daydreaming too much and raised in a struggling inner-city New York neighborhood-who eventually grew to become an artist, a leading educator, and an award-winning scholar.

In this new release from Simple Word Publications, author James Haywood Rolling, Jr. composes a rich canvas of raw vignettes, family photos, original illustrations and poems in order to sketch a candid self-portrait that details:

*His upbringing as the first-born son and namesake of Jim Rolling, a talented professional artist-and a domineering father.

*The unexpected personal consequences of being bused to school daily from his home in a racially segregated area of Crown Heights to the predominantly white neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay on the other side of Brooklyn at the start of the controversial school choice vs. public education debate and during the first efforts to desegregate schools across New York City in the early 1970s.

*How being identified and tracked since elementary school as a gifted student contributed to a dangerously distorted view of himself and his own capabilities-until God intervened.

No matter who or what first made you feel ugly, here is storytelling that elevates its readers beyond their own scars, social anxiety, or low self-esteem. This is a book for anyone who has ever been underestimated, bullied, abused, or simply overlooked. It's time to re-imagine your way from daydreams to destiny.

Growing Up Ugly makes a great gift for any family raising African American children, for anyone committed to mentoring Black boys, or anyone teaching and serving in marginalized and under-resourced communities. An in-depth reflection on the power to reshape how one's presence is seen and felt in the world, this book is also an ideal addition to libraries serving multicultural populations!