Structure

I'm Still Here features 14 chapters, plus three interludes interspersed throughout. The book is a genre hybrid, with elements of memoir, sociology, and advice included in its framework. As a memoir, Brown proceeds through her personal story in a roughly linear fashion, beginning with her childhood. This facilitates a coming-of-age theme, as the reader follows the author through her years of education at predominantly white schools and then witnesses her process of self-discovery and transformation as she embraces her Black identity in her teen years after her parents' divorce. In the later chapters, Brown narrates more recent experiences, including the death of her cousin Dalin in prison and her response to events like the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the protests that followed and the 2015 attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Brown also draws from her personal experience as a...