MK Asante was born in Zimbabwe to American parents: a mother who led the new nation"s dance company and a father who would soon become a revered pioneer in African American Studies. A little more than a decade later MK was back in America, in Philadelphia, calling himself Buck and carrying a semi-automatic gun to school. He was alone--his mother slowly collapsing from mental illness, his father gone, his sister in an asylum, and his older brother locked up in a prison on the other side of the country. Buck is a powerful tale about how one precocious, charming, confused boy educates himself on the streets of inner-city America--through gangs, hip-hop, cults, and, eventually, literature--and an inspiring tribute to the power of storytelling and poetry to heal us at our broken places.