Street life: Poverty, gangs, and a ph.d.

"When my mother was three months pregnant with me, she took a trip to visit her parents. When she came back, my father was gone with no explanation. After I was born, she gave me her last name. My mother believed that my father did not deserve to have a child with his last name, if he wasn't around to raise him. The older I became, the more I yearned to know my father and the more ashamed I felt for not having one."