On His Relationship With His Family
In the book, James gets real about race, opening up about being raised by a white single mother and an absentee Black father. He wrote a lot about his relationship with his maternal grandfather, who he felt treated him and his brother, John, differently than his white cousins.
“Grandpa never told us he loved us. That bothered me more than any of the other petty acts,” he wrote. “If six different ‘I love yous’ rang out from six different grandchildren, only four were returned.”
His relationship with his dad has always been rocky, but got more difficult when he learned that he fathered two more children with two different women. Matt’s brother also had his own struggles, landing in jail after being part of a robbery at a Jersey Mike’s.
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