Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
Liz Murray
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 1401310591
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Breaking night: (Urban slang) staying up through the night, until the sun rises
Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard.
Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep.
When Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman's indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.
stay with you? I need to leave, now.” Jamie’s apartment was one stop in a series of different friends’ homes, patches of refuge as I carved out what was next, this time alone. Jamie had a fierce argument with her mom, and I was granted one week’s stay. I’ll never forget Jamie’s kindness—how she didn’t even question me, just helped any way she could, like family. She borrowed cab money from her mom, washed my clothes while I took a steaming hot shower, made us tuna-fish sandwiches with the crusts
whistling and sucking noises with their wet, beer-shiny lips. We passed a few of Ma’s friends sitting nearby, perched on stoops, eyes trained on their children, clutching overloaded keychains decorated with plastic Puerto Rican flags and smiling coqui frogs in straw hats. The plastic jumble of trinkets clinked with each disciplinary raise of the mothers’ hands. Children circled sprinklers and teenagers claimed street corners. The block thumped salsa as we crossed University onto 188th, Lisa and
hammer to my chest, that maybe I’d driven her crazy and paid for the needle that infected her with AIDS, too. “Idiot,” I said out loud. “Moron.” I hurled a pillow across the room, smashing the pieces of my diorama. The Popsicle stick fence, still glued together, clacked onto the floor, snapping in half. Chapter 4 Unraveling IF OUR APARTMENT HAD BEEN A WORLD UNTO ITSELF BEFORE, THEN by the time I was nearly twelve years old, the four of us came to live on entirely different continents,
disassociate myself from Ma, and there she was, sticking up for me, proud of me for no real reason at all. The counselor’s laugh was insulting. She explained that finding my placement was a matter of looking over my records from the last school I’d attended. I fumbled nervously with my hair scrunchie, twisted between guilt, nerves, love for my mother, and fear that I would only disappoint her, prove that her faith in me was unfounded. It took only a moment for the counselor to skim my file
girlfriend. “My friend’s girl, ain’t she a sweetheart,” he’d explain. “I might check them for dinner, she just gave me the address.” And always, the explanation was a concrete wall that I could not penetrate. The more I persisted, the more I might draw attention to myself. Better to let it slide; he cared about me, I was certain. Besides, there were other things to focus on, like Sam and me learning to navigate our newfound “freedom” for ourselves. Our tactics were in need of some polishing,