Marquis is a book smart prep-schooler living with his adoptive white family in the affluent suburb of Achievement Heights; Tru is a street savvy kid from the inner city of Baltimore. Their worlds overlap in a holding cell — a first for Marquis, who has been protected by his family’s privilege, but all too familiar to Tru. They butt heads, debate, wrestle, and ultimately prove Nietzsche and Tupac were really saying the same thing.
Described by The Washington Post as “entirely fearless,” HOODED; OR BEING BLACK FOR DUMMIES is a wickedly whimsical story chronicling two polar experiences of growing up black in America.











