A Life: in Eight Shorts

By Shira Destinie A. Jones

A Life in Eight Shorts: Narrative Nonfiction as Autobiography for Project Do Better, Phase IV uses short narratives written by the author to form a skeleton of a memoir.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ShiraDest
• Release date: Feb 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215054710

Shira Destinie A. Jones

About the Author: Shira Destinie Jones, MPhil, MAT mathematics, BSCS, has experienced housing and food insecurity as a child, lived in projects in Oxon Hill, MD and Anacostia, DC, struggled with gender strife at the US Naval Academy, and dealt with class and color line divisions in Baltimore. She has worked in developing countries and rich countries, studied economic social policy, and taught on the importance of history and shared governance through walking tours, presentations, and classroom lessons. Straddling several worlds as a polyglot has allowed her to hear in their own words from rich and poor people in Turkey, England, Mexico, and France. Comparing that with experiences from her own background of origin has led her to use her studies to create a plan with the potential to build cooperation between all parts of our society, in the interest of the common good.

Book preview

Chapter 1:   I Shouldn’t Exist?

Memories of visiting mid 1970’s NYC from NJ...

We were in one of those tunnels, smelling the stink of the city.  Was this the Lincoln, or the Holland?  I could hear Suzanna calling the gas station owner a putz, again, over the cough of her little VW’s engine.   I thought I’d seen a flash of blue light for a second, but then the engine stuttered.  I hoped we wouldn’t break down.   She’d said that he watered down his gas to make more money.  How did they put water in the gasoline, anyway?  Wasn’t it all closed up somewhere?    I turned to Suzanna.  She knew so many interesting things, and never told me to stop asking questions.  

She wouldn’t look at me.

My stomach started to get upset, the way it did with other people, when they got mad.  But I’d never seen Suzanna mad at me, even when I peaked in her room at the Wonder Woman poster she was saving for my seventh birthday.

Look.

Her voice was wrong, not hers.  I tried to look over at her, but I couldn’t move.  What did I do?     It was like ...   Why were we pulling over?

Suzanna looked up at the rear view mirror, at something behind us.  When she turned back, leaning to look me in the eyes, her face wore a mask of fright.

Alright, that cop is going to think you’re my daughter.

She looked at me in a weird way.  Like I scared her, and went on,

"So