Summary

Chapter 1 is titled “Smile.” Johnson begins by stating that when he was five years old, he had his teeth knocked out in a fight. But then, before he tells the story of how that happened, he describes his family background. He grew up, he says, in the small community of Plainfield, New Jersey with parents who worked long hours for the police department and tended to leave him and his younger brother Garrett with Nanny, their mother’s mother. Nanny, Johnson says, was determined that her grandchildren not be affected by life on the streets. He, meanwhile, knew he was different from a very early age, sensing early on that he was not like other boys.

One day, Johnson says, he was walking to Nanny’s with his cousins, Little Rall and Rasul, as he usually did. The three...