Leaving Breezy Street

A Memoir

By: Brenda Myers-Powell, April Reynolds - contributor

Narrated by: Karen Chilton

"This is a full-bodied performance, complete with salty language and harrowing situations, but listeners will love Chilton's portrayal of Breezy's determination to find her place in the world." (Audiofile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner)

Belonging on the shelf with Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Leaving Breezy Street — the stunning account of Brenda Myers-Powell’s brutal and beautiful life — is a critical addition to the American canon.

Fourteen years old, poor, Black, mother dead, two babies to feed and clothe, and a grandmother who is not full of motherly kindness, to put it mildly. What money-making options are open to a girl like Brenda Myers?

When Breezy, as she came to call herself, hit the streets of Chicago as a prostitute in 1973 she was barely a teenager. But she was pretty and funny as hell, and determined to support her daughters and make a living. For the next 25 years, she moved across the country, finding new pimps, parties, drugs, and endless, profound heartache. And she also — astonishingly — managed to find the strength to break from a brutal world and not only save herself but save future Breezys.

Great, compelling memoirs can bring us into worlds that have been beyond our comprehension and make us “get it”. What these books tell us is not that we can all move beyond the lives into which we were born. The lesson is that everyone deserves to be truly seen by others and offered a path forward.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

©2021 Brenda Myers-Powell (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

I'm in awe

This book was amazing. I am in awe and I have not stopped talking about this book!

Powerful and beautiful story

So inspirational, it’s an authentic, raw telling of a former prostitute-Brenda Jean Myers story. It’s painful, powerful, full of hope. A must read.

wonderful

My wife abdI were able 2 listen to this while we worked. Absolutely lived it

Touching

Loved every part of this because it was to real. The narrator was perfect! So proud of Brenda!

absolutely must listen!

i’ve been an audible member for almost 20yrs so believe me when i tell u this was one of my top 5 listens of all time