{"id":16560,"date":"2025-07-10T16:40:57","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T16:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=16560"},"modified":"2025-07-10T16:40:57","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T16:40:57","slug":"yet-here-i-am-lessons-from-a-black-mans-search-for-home-by-jonathan-capehart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/10\/yet-here-i-am-lessons-from-a-black-mans-search-for-home-by-jonathan-capehart\/","title":{"rendered":"Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man\u2019s Search for Home by Jonathan Capehart"},"content":{"rendered":"

c.2025, Grand Central\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>
\n $30.00\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>
\n272 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Terri Schlichenmeyer<\/strong>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/strong><\/p>\n

One hand over the other.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how you climbed to where you are now. One rung at a time, hand over hand until you reach the intended goal. Yes, sometimes you went backward before you ascended again or you had to move sideways past a barrier. And sometimes, as in the new memoir, Yet Here I Am<\/em> by Jonathan Capehart, <\/strong>you got a hand up.<\/p>\n

His mother refused to talk about it.<\/p>\n

When little Jonathan Capehart inquired about his father, who died just months after Capehart was born, he was met with a look that told him not to ask again. He didn\u2019t learn the truth until he was well out of childhood: his father had left Capehart\u2019s mother long before Capehart\u2019s birth, and though the man visited afterward, \u201che didn\u2019t stay long\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

The loss stung but things turned out well anyhow. Capehart had many father figures throughout his life, paternal relatives who kept him in the family loop, and his maternal grandpa who played a big part of Capehart\u2019s upbringing. Young Capehart spend his summers in Severn, North Carolina, playing, visiting, gathering lessons and wisdom from his mother\u2019s parents and aunts. In Severn, extended family was everywhere, and it\u2019s where many of Capehart\u2019s best childhood memories spring.<\/p>\n

He also has many cherished memories of his mother, and books. He was always a reader, and schoolmates recognized it. They also \u201cknew I was a little \u2018funny\u2019,\u201d he muses because, at ten years old, he knew he was gay. His mother had had to teach him the hard truths in \u201chow to be Black in white spaces\u201d but college friends gave him safety for \u201cself-discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also at the tender age of 10, Capehart became fascinated with electronic media, and decided that he wanted to work at NBC, later interning at the Today<\/em> show for two summers. At 19, he met a mentor who demanded excellence, and who shaped Capehart\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

Twelve years later, that same mentor offered Capehart his own MSNBC show\u2026<\/p>\n

As memoirs go, Yet Here I Am<\/em> is a solid okay.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not earth-shattering, nor is it wildly fascinating. It\u2019s not exciting or heart-wrenching or even all that emotional, but it\u2019s not terrible, either. Overall, it\u2019s smack-center, a \u201c5\u201d on a one-to-ten scale, and there we are.<\/p>\n

Moving from his middle-class childhood in which he vaguely understood the racism present in his mother\u2019s hometown, to a wildly successful career in media and the mentors who helped him get where he is, author Jonathan Capehart shares his story with a casual tone that\u2019s calm and matter-of-fact. Readers get a nice look at the workings of journalism and what it\u2019s like to win a Pulitzer Prize, but if you\u2019re expecting the kind of excitement you want in a deadline-racing newsroom, it\u2019s not here; instead, Capehart writes in a decidedly unruffled manner that\u2019s really pretty tame.<\/p>\n

Still, Capehart fans will absolutely want to read this memoir for its thoughtfulness and its satisfactory ending. Not a fan? Then Yet Here I Am<\/em> could be a long climb.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

c.2025, Grand Central\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 $30.00\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 272 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor One hand over the other. That\u2019s how you climbed to where you are now. One rung at a time, hand over hand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-16560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16562,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16560\/revisions\/16562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16560"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=16560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}