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3 A Politic of Survival A Cultural Self-Portrait: Mike (in His Own Words) As a young man growing up in Danville, Virginia, I found myself trying to figure out why having a family was so important. My mother, Newman Maurice “Nance” Nunnally, was born in Jersey City and was the youngest sibling of three. My mother was named after one of her uncles. But it was hard being a little girl with a man’s name, so the family began to call her “Penny.” The reason they called her “Penny” is that my mother always had a kind heart and they always told her that as long as you have a penny you will never go broke. My mother never got a chance to know her own mother. Her mom was killed by her husband (my mom’s father). He was not found guilty. The family has always felt that in the late fifties there was no justice—another murdered black woman meant that there was one less Negro on the streets in the eyes of the law. Her mother was killed before she [my mom] was even one year old. So my mom was raised by her grandmother. My mom eventually moved to Danville, Virginia, with her grandmother. For years she would travel back and forth between Jersey and Danville in order to keep the relationship she had with her siblings and her father alive. But her father was later killed by a drive-by shooting while he was standing in the front door of his home. My mom was sixteen. She never knew her mom, and now her dad was also dead. She was really between a rock and a hard place, and she was looking to start her own functional family. My mother got kicked out of school when she was in the eleventh grade for protecting one of her cousins during a fight. So my mom went to work. Back in the 1970s you could get a decent job where you could provide for yourself but not a family. My mother’s life growing up was rough, and she did not want her children to witness what she had throughout her childhood. a politic of survival 59 In 1977, my mother met my father, Solomon Tyrone Nunnally Jr., who was born and raised in Pelham, North Carolina. My father is the oldest sibling out of eleven children—six boys and seven girls. My father, just like my mother, never finished high school, but he never let his lack of education get in the way of him living life. My father grew up a little different than my mother because he was raised by both of his parents and his grandmother was a preacher. Since my father was the oldest, my grandparents expected a lot from him when it came to helping out with the family. My father was well known in his hometown as “Good Time” because they all knew that when it was time to party, somebody better call Tyrone. My father loved his family, but he was more concerned with making money so he could go out and have a good time. My father was a country boy who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty to make a quick buck. He started off working on cars with his brothers in his dad’s front yard. But then he realized that he wanted to see and travel the world—to see what was out there. At the age of eighteen he started working for this trucking company so he could live out his dream of being the first in his family to see all fifty states. He did see the states. But during his journey he forgot what was important in life—his family. It was during this time that he also became abusive toward my mother. As a child, I had to face being a part of a family dealing with domestic violence. I am a middle child of four siblings with an older brother named Tyrone, younger brother named Torrance, and a baby sister named Sherita. The first time I saw my father put his hands on my mother, I was ten years old, and I did not know what to do. My older brother, Tyrone, came into the living room and pulled my dad off of her and yelled at me, “I bet’ not ever see you sit here and watch him put his hands on Mom.” From that day...

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