It’s just everything Jill is. I could audibly hear her reading each page, as I read. Love every word of this.

A poet says what kicks, festers, eats at, drives, elates, stuns and saddens inside the mind, body and spirit. A poet has the gift of condensing an entire experience, a life, into a few quiet but powerful words, words that speak to us, the audience, the reader, as if they were spoken only to each of us alone. Jill Scott has these abilities and more as this gift of her poetry so amply illustrates. She allows us the privilege of being with her as a child, looking up to a mother who loved her unconditionally even though she had to struggle to raise her, as a woman trying to be what she thought men wanted her to be while denying who she was, as someone doing what needed to be done to put a roof over her head and as an individual so much in love with the written word that she was able to achieve success both as a poet and a singer of deeply moving emotions. I read this book in one sitting. It was not just itchily addicting but possessed a velvet glove that could just as easily reach into your guts and twist them.