Oakland Hills, Milwaukee Rivers: A Memoir of Survival, Identity, and Purpose

Winner, 2025 International Impact Book Awards (Family, LGBTQ+, Memoir).His mother endured eleven miscarriages before his birth and two more after. He was considered a miracle child, yet he was surrounded by drugs, poverty, and instability, and dealt a hand many believed he could never overcome. Beneath everything happening around him, Keyimani was simply a young boy trying to understand where he belonged, why life had to be so hard, and whether something better was waiting for him.Growing up in Oakland, Keyimani learned early how to adapt. He learned how to read a room, make something out of very little, find laughter in difficult circumstances, and keep moving even when the ground beneath his life never seemed completely steady.Then came a knock at the door.That moment would eventually take him from the poverty-stricken streets of East Oakland to a new life in Milwaukee, where family, faith, unexpected love, and new possibilities began to show him that his future could look different from his past.But growing up would require more than changing cities.In Oakland Hills, Milwaukee Rivers: A Memoir of Survival, Identity, and Purpose, Keyimani invites readers into the experiences that shaped him: childhood adventures, complicated family relationships, frequent moves, loss, mistakes, questions about identity and belonging, moments of grace, and the people who refused to stop believing in him.Through it all, you meet a boy who keeps hoping, keeps questioning, keeps adapting, and keeps getting back up.And somewhere along the journey, his story may begin to remind you of your own.Readers describe the memoir as raw, heartfelt, relatable, emotional, and deeply authentic, with some saying they laughed, cried, reflected on their own lives, and saw themselves in his experiences.Open these pages and read the award-winning memoir of a boy who defied the odds