A powerful and deeply personal novel that follows a young African American man’s journey through the court system on the wrong side of the color line.
The world is black and white—but Rilei tends to live in a gray area—until life forces him to open his eyes. From his sheltered childhood to his rude awakening to reality, must learn how to be a survivor in the ghetto streets of Akron, Ohio.
Being a survivor also means that he’ll have to learn how to accept that the world doesn’t come in different shades of gray, and that he is on the wrong side of black and white. When he enters the criminal justice system, he finds it rigged against him from the beginning. Can Rilei tell his story and change the fate society has written for him?
 
From a new voice in Black American fiction, this is a powerful, evocative portrait of a young man finding his way in a sometimes-hostile society that offers a first-person account of racism and asks: On the wrong side of the color line, is American justice possible, or is it just us?