MAGNOLIA STEEL

Raised in the Magnolia Projects of New Orleans, where every day demanded armor, Magnolia Steel is more than a story—it’s a reckoning.

Told through a voice forged by war, poverty, and memory, this book walks the thin line between survival and surrender. Caught between the battlefield and the block, the narrator carries trauma like a second skin. But beneath the gun smoke and street silence lies something deeper: a hunger for healing, legacy, and truth.

This is not fiction dressed for entertainment. This is autofiction—a story rooted in lived experience, where the line between what happened and what had to be imagined is blurred by necessity. It’s about what it means to grow up behind enemy lines, to be betrayed by your country, and to rebuild yourself without permission.

Magnolia Steel doesn’t flinch. It doesn’t ask for pity. It tells the truth—hard, unfiltered, and soaked in survival. For anyone who’s ever clawed their way through shadows, this story might feel like coming home.

In a world that often forgets the people who bear the weight of its violence—veterans, the incarcerated, the poor, the unheard—Magnolia Steel refuses to let those stories go untold. It reminds us that survival has a voice, and that healing doesn’t always arrive clean or easy.

This book matters because it speaks for the ones who aren’t usually in the room when stories are written. It exposes the quiet cost of being a Black man asked to serve a country that won’t serve you back. It names what many are told to swallow—and it does so with grit, grace, and an unwavering grip on truth.

This isn’t just literature. It’s lived experience turned testimony.