title: That Mean Old Yesterday: A Memoir
author: Stacey Patton
description: "[A]n unforgettable document of uniquely intelligent triumph." -- David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography<br /><br />"Raw with pain, anger, and yearning, <I>That Mean Old Yesterday</i> also crackles with an abundance of intelligence, courage, and pure guts. Stacey Patton survived a childhood of abandonment and abuse and built herself into an accomplished, truly self-made young woman. Her memoir will grab you by the heart and blow your mind. A stunning literary debut." -- Jill Nelson, author of the bestselling memoir <I>Volunteer Slavery</i> and, most recently, <I>Finding Martha's Vineyard: African Americans at Home on an Island</i><br /><br />"Stacey Patton is a tour-de-force writer -- weaving together her many gifts as a natural storyteller as well as a steel-eyed historian, scholar, sage, poet, and journalist. In <I>That Mean Old Yesterday</i>, Patton performs a kind of sleight of hand by telling her own heartbreaking and triumphant story in context of the collective journey of African Americans -- out of slavery, through freedom, toward redemption. What makes this memoir even more universal and important is that in it we are movingly shown how it is possible to confront the past and why we must." -- Mim Eichler Rivas, coauthor of <I>The Pursuit of Happyness</i> with Chris Gardner and Quincy Troupe<br /><br />"For those of us who have lived through the war zone of family violence and the attempted denigration of the human spirit, Stacey Patton's <I>That Mean Old Yesterday</i> is a testament that you can reclaim your life and positively impact the lives of others. In her deeply moving and revealing memoir, Patton powerfully reminded me that there is always hope." -- Victor Rivas Rivers, actor, activist, and author of <I>A Private Family Matter</i>
zlib_text: Yesterday
  is Ours
   
   
  By HJ Bellus
   
  
  Yesterday is Ours
   
  Copyright © 2019 by HJ Bellus.
  All rights reserved.
  First Print Edition: April 2019
   
   
  Limitless Publishing, LLC
  Kailua, HI 96734
  www.limitlesspublishing.com
   
  Formatting: Limitless Publishing
   
  ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-571-3
  ISBN-10: 1-64034-571-X
   
  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any
  printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or
  encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
   
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
  the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
  resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—
  living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
  
  Dedication
   
  To my girls…Michelle, Diane, and Stacy Jo. You girls always have my
  back and believe in my words. You may never know how muc