On today’s “Let’s Get Lit” edition of “Tamron Hall,” rapper and author Jay “Jeezy” Jenkins joined the Tam Fam to discuss his new book, “Adversity for Sale: Ya Gotta Believe.” Later, New York Times best-selling author Chloe Gong opened up about her BookTok fame and her newest novel, “Immortal Longings.” Additionally, National Book Award-winning author and poet Elizabeth Acevedo talked about her first adult novel “Family Lore” and becoming a mom. More inside….
Jay “Jeezy” Jenkins on his book “Adversity for Sale”:
“That’s what changed my mindset. You know what’s crazy? She [Jeezy’s grandmother] never saw none of my success. She said, ‘Boy, you’re going to jail,’ that’s all she used to tell me. She never understood that I was ambitious, she just thought I was being bad. But I was trying to get my mother and my sister back out of the hood because when my parents got divorced, we had a single wide trailer no bigger than this stage with like three of us in the house and I was really trying to go out there and be the man of the house at 13 years old.” On his past struggles with anxiety and depression, “Well I learned that vulnerability is power. It’s power. And I learned that I thought something was wrong with me, right, thinking I come from poverty, this is just how it is.
I didn’t understand trauma and all these different things so when I started to get the words for it, I started to understand and grab tools, I started to become better. I started my journey and that’s why I’m expressing it and putting it in the book because I didn’t know I was depressed for like eight years of my life straight. You wake up and you just want to go back to sleep forever, you know? And I was leaning into my vices. And that’s what street life does to you. You know what I’m saying? When you lose 200, 300, 400 people like gone forever, you just, you get numb. And I wasn’t able to get in touch with my emotions and I was wondering why. Thank God for my kids but there was a time I was just cold. That’s when I was young Jeezy.”
