Debra Dickerson's An American Story is a success story: it's about her journey from a poor black St. Louis neighborhood into the ranks of America's public intellectuals, by way of the U.S. Air Force and Harvard Law. But the moral of the story is not that race and class no longer matter; the lessons she draws from experience are more complicated, and vitally important for a society struggling to understand what race and class mean in a new century.

In recent years, Debra Dickerson has emerged as one of the most original and provocative writers on the dynamics of identity in a changing America. This fascinating memoir details the experiences which have shaped her iconoclastic and important perspective on race and class in the U.S.