In this exceptional memoir, architect and Afro-Brazilian immigrant Damaris Melo-Gyasi reflects on her journey of personal growth, unwavering faith, and white-knuckled resilience that began in inner-city São Paulo and led to a thriving decades-long career in the United States.

Melo-Gyasi was the youngest daughter of three children in a working-class household. Religion was an unquestionable calling and duty in her family; as practitioners of Assembly of God, a Pentecostal denomination, they enforced devoutness as tightly as frugality.

One evening, at age seven, Melo-Gyasi stumbled upon her parents in the kitchen, speaking to the woman architect hired to build the family’s new house. Melo-Gyasi was impressed by the woman’s fashionable outfit and professionalism—and that she inhabited a world far removed from the patriarchal obedience of Assembly of God. Inspired, she told her parents she wanted to become an architect. But they shut her down: They couldn’t afford college, they responded. Also, her meager public-school education would never properly prepare her for required admissions tests.

Still, Melo-Gyasi persevered. As a teenager, she balanced household chores and church obligations with work. Despite nearly unbearable challenges, including failing the entrance exam to technical high school, backlash from her church community, financial insecurity, debilitating moments of anxiety, repeated sexual harassment from a professor, the struggle to learn English, and visa complications, Melo-Gyasi persisted. After graduating from USP, she landed a job at an Arizona architecture firm.

Melo-Gyasi recounts formidable struggles with notable emotional clarity and honesty, rejecting self-pity to embrace humor, grace, and self-compassion. Her faith is the book’s beating heart, but she proudly celebrates her beliefs without proselytizing. Her language choices (“an archipelago of stringy clouds”) and lively sentences (“I felt as small and vulnerable as a cricket on a new-mown lawn”) create vivid images and reinforce her rich, singular narrative voice.

Melo-Gyasi’s remarkable memoir is a profound testament to the endurance of the human spirit. Readers will carry her story like a shield against self-doubt and self-sabotage.

Also available in hardcover, ebook and audio book.