Explore the Book
Out of Frame: Growing Up Where I Didn’t Belong
A memoir examining identity, belonging, and memory through the experience of growing up as a military child—largely removed from Black American culture—and the later reckoning that came from navigating institutions that shape who is seen, heard, and remembered.
About the Memoir
A story about belonging, memory, and the systems around us
Out of Frame is not a conventional military-brat memoir. Rather than centering movement and adventure, it examines the “frame” around a life—the institutional, racial, and cultural boundaries that shape how a child learns to read authority, adapt to place, and understand where he does or does not belong.
The book follows the experience of growing up largely removed from Black American culture while navigating the distinct world of military life, where discipline, hierarchy, and performance often take precedence over emotional recognition and rooted identity.
Over time, that childhood adaptation becomes something more complicated: a survival skill shaped by institutions. The memoir explores what happens when “fitting in” is less about belonging than about learning to read power, minimize friction, and perform stability inside systems that quietly define who is seen, heard, and remembered.
Written with restraint and reflection, Out of Frame connects personal memory to broader questions of race, hierarchy, cultural transition, and institutional life. It is both a memoir and a study of the environments that shape identity long before we have the language to name them.
In Bookstores
From publication to shelf
Out of Frame has appeared in select independent bookstores, including Skylight Books—an especially meaningful context given the book’s engagement with race, memory, and American cultural transition.
Seeing the book placed in an independent bookstore setting gave it a different kind of presence—one connected not just to publication, but to public conversation.
That it shared shelf space near authors such as James Baldwin and works examining the life and legacy of Rosa Parks underscored the world the memoir is entering: one concerned with identity, memory, race, and the cultural structures that define belonging in America.
A Personal Milestone
Holding the finished book
Publication is one moment. Holding the book in your hands is another.
For a writer, a finished book carries more than pages and design. It holds years of observation, memory, revision, and the effort of giving shape to experiences that once lived only internally.
Out of Frame is part of a larger body of work that examines how people move through institutions, histories, and environments that were already structured before they arrived. That throughline continues across memoir, speaking, and history-driven film projects such as Barrage.
Purchase Options
Ready to read Out of Frame?
The book is available through major retailers and independent-bookstore channels. Readers who want to support indie bookselling are encouraged to begin with Bookshop.org or request the book through their local store.