MK Asante’s new memoir ‘Nephew’

The Connection with Marty Moss-Coane

Filmmaker, hip-hop artist and professor MK Asante’s 2013 memoir Buck described growing up in Philadelphia in the 90s “unsupervised, with my brother gone, my dad gone, my mom gone and me just on the block in the neighborhood, roaming the streets of Philly — just lost.” The book explored his transformation from petty drug dealer to poet.

Now over a decade later, Asante has a new memoir, Nephew: A Memoir in 4-Part Harmony and join us this week to talk about it. It begins with Asante sitting vigil by his nephew Nasir’s bedside at Temple University hospital, where he is close to death after being shot nine times. The book is written to Nasir about their family’s complicated legacy of secrets, loss, faith, and redemption. It’s also about the power of music and language to connect us and heal old wounds.