Personal Memoirs
After a lifetime of struggle with identification, segregation, integration, and spiritual and cultural self-discovery I awakened to find that all of the knowledge I had gathered amounted to no more than a voluminous collection of unorganized information. Not until I made the pilgrimage to the Motherland and sat at the feet of my indigenous African elders and ancestors did I realize the missing ingredient…
Blending real-life occurrences with beautifully articulated metaphor, author Kenneth Rodgers describes the joy, pain, confusion, and richness of life found in an African-American community. Not My Shadow chronicles one man’s journey of self-discovery on the streets of North Philadelphia in the sixties and seventies, during a time of great upheaval and social change. With wit, humor, and pulsating emotion, Rodgers shares his memories of church, school, and family; his thoughts on politics and society; and his growing-awareness of self; giving the reader an authentic picture of the African-American experience in a way that only one who has grown up in the community can achieve. Not My Shadow is a powerful expose of life in an urban American neighborhood and an intimate look at one man’s soul.