That Mean Old Yesterday is anastonishing coming-of-age memoirby a young woman who survivedthe foster care system to become anaward-winning journalist.
No one would ever imagine that the vibrant,smart, and attractive Stacey Patton had achildhood from hell. Once a foster child whofound a home, she was supposed to be amongthe lucky. On a rainy night in November 1999,a shoeless Stacey, promising student at NYU,headed down a New Jersey street toward heradoptive parents' house. She carried a gun inher pocket, and she kept repeating to herselfthat she would pull the trigger. She wanted tokill them. Or so she thought.
This is a story of how a typical Americanfamily can be undermined by its own effortto be perfect on the surface. After all, withGod-fearing, house-proud, and hardworkingadoptive parents, Stacey appeared to beatthe odds. But her mother was tyrannical, andher father, either so in love with or in fear ofhis wife, turned a blind eye to the abuse sheheaped on their love-starved little girl.
In That Mean Old Yesterday, a little girlrises above the tyranny of an overzealousmother by channeling her intellectual energyinto schoolwork. Wise beyond her years,she can see that her chances for survival areadvanced through her struggle to get into anelite boarding school. She uses all she has, a brilliant mind, to link her experience to thelegacy of American slavery and to successfullyframe her understanding of why her goodadoptive parents did terrible things to her byrealizing that they had terrible things done tothem.