Summary of Brittany K. Barnett's A Knock at Midnight

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Mama was a tall, long-waisted, young Black woman with the deep-set paisley eyes and high, full cheekbones of her Filipina and half-Cherokee grandmothers. She was a beautiful woman, but she took pride in controlling her own destiny.

#2 I was born in 1984 when my parents were still living with their parents. My mom was seventeen when she got pregnant with me, and my dad was sixteen, a sophomore in high school. My mom was reluctant to be away from me, her first baby. She appreciated the help, but she wanted out from under all of it.

#3 My mother, who was twenty-three, had two toddlers underfoot. She had given up her dreams of the military, but she was determined to make something of herself. She attended nursing school all day in Paris, Texas, and worked the evening shift as an aide in a nursing home.

#4 When I started kindergarten, Jazz was left alone, collecting the last of the sweet plums, feeding stray pups, and riding bikes with our cousin Chauncy while Mama slept off the night shift. Each day, she waited anxiously for the mailman at the big tin mailbox in front of our house.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822552647

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Insights on Brittany K. Barnett's A Knock at Midnight

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Mama was a tall, long-waisted, young Black woman with the deep-set paisley eyes and high, full cheekbones of her Filipina and half-Cherokee grandmothers. She was a beautiful woman, but she took pride in controlling her own destiny.

#2

I was born in 1984 when my parents were still living with their parents. My mom was seventeen when she got pregnant with me, and my dad was sixteen, a sophomore in high school. My mom was reluctant to be away from me, her first baby. She appreciated the help, but she wanted out from under all of it.

#3

My mother, who was twenty-three, had two toddlers underfoot. She had given up her dreams of the military, but she was determined to make something of herself. She attended nursing school all day in Paris, Texas, and worked the evening shift as an aide in a nursing home.

#4

When I started kindergarten, Jazz was left alone, collecting the last of the sweet plums, feeding stray pups, and riding bikes with our cousin Chauncy while Mama slept off the night shift. Each day, she waited anxiously for the mailman at the big tin mailbox in front of our house.

#5

I had a happy country childhood in my small rural town, but when the drug war came for me and my family, it came with a vengeance.

#6

I was only ten years old when I saw my mother using a crack pipe. It made sense to me that she was selling Girl Scout cookies, but not the money she was keeping. She would spend nights pacing around the house, and sometimes I would hear voices and footsteps as my parents argued.

#7

I was too young to understand the implications of my mother’s addiction, and I wanted to save her and protect her from drugs. I didn’t realize that I was the child and she was the mother, or that I couldn’t save her.

#8

When Mama came out of rehab, Jazz and I came back to Bogata. While Mama was drug free, we clung to the signs of normalcy and hope.

#9

I would bring my mother money every other Friday, as I understood she wasn’t well. But America’s War on Drugs was in