My Life: My Awakening is a gripping, urban coming-of-age story that is as real as the air you are consuming. Maurice Maynard Washington, also known as Mana Mane, was an innocent nine-year-old - full of naiveté and wholesomeness - when he was suddenly thrust into the underworld of the ghetto culture. Drugs, gangs and violence colored his life through adulthood as he learned to survive and even prosper in the challenging world of Watts' Nickerson Garden Housing Projects. This book offers a detailed playbook of a harrowing, sometimes comical series of adventures and tragedies that lend insight to the world of missteps, wrong turns and reversals, contrasted by pure innocence, heroics and outstanding saves. This book, Mana Mane's story, is the story of a specific individual that gives voice to so many untold others. This book is not just a ghetto story, though. It is an adventure, an odyssey less traveled by the masses, yet too frequently traveled by the marginalized. This story is an American story; will you come along for the ride?