Nev of Harlem

I am from Harlem.

Not simply in the sense that I was born there, but in the generational sense. I was born and raised in Harlem. My mother was from Harlem and three of my grandparents had roots there as well. My family grew up around the 140s and 8th Avenue. My maternal grandmother, who was Native American, came to Harlem sometime around the late 1940s or 1950s, as I understand our family history.

Harlem is therefore more than the place where my story begins. It is part of my inheritance.

My family did not come from a tradition of formal education. My father and my uncle Clarence (Preacher), who raised me, did not finish elementary school. My mother eventually earned her GED sometime before I was born. My childhood unfolded against the backdrop of poverty, addiction, incarceration, and the drug economy that consumed parts of New York City during that era.

My father was incarcerated shortly before I was born and remained in and out of jail throughout much of my childhood. Yet he remained something of a legend in the world immediately around me.

I remember basketball trophies that seemed taller than I was. He had been an exceptionally talented basketball player, and when people in Harlem heard my name, some would tell me stories about watching him play at Rucker Park. I was told that he once had an opportunity to try out for the New York Knicks, an opportunity he did not pursue.

I eventually played at Rucker Park myself as a child.

I played horribly.

Fortunately, this was before everybody carried a camera in their pocket, so there is, to my knowledge, no surviving video evidence. I am perfectly comfortable keeping it that way.

Still, I can say that both father and son played at Rucker Park. That is one small piece of Harlem history I am happy to claim.

The Kid Who Loved School

If my father had basketball, I had books.

I was a book nerd from the beginning. I loved school. I loved reading. Comic books were among my earliest obsessions, but I would read almost anything I could get my hands on.

There is one story that probably explains my relationship with education better than anything else. When I was in first grade, I became sick and had to stay home from school. The school happened to be directly across the street from where we lived. At some point, apparently deciding that being sick was no reason to miss everything, I crossed the street by myself and showed up at school during recess.

My teacher was understandably confused. My mother was understandably terrified when she discovered I was missing. But once everyone figured out that I had simply taken myself to school, the crisis was resolved.

That was me. Even as a child, school was somewhere I wanted to be.

Looking back now—as someone who would eventually devote much of his professional life to education—I recognize how important that instinct was. When almost everything else around me became unstable, education remained one of the few things I believed belonged to me.