Buck

Spiegel & Grau/Random House, 2013 | Memoir | MK Asante

Buck

"A story of surviving and thriving with passion, compassion, wit, and style ..." -Maya Angelou

Buy Now

Buck is a powerful memoir of how a rebellious, precocious kid educated himself through the most unconventional teachers—outlaws and eccentrics, rappers and mystic strangers, ghetto philosophers and strippers, and, eventually, an alternative school that transformed his life with a single blank sheet of paper. It’s a one-of-a-kind story about finding your purpose in life, and an inspiring tribute to the power of art.

*Washington Post Best-seller, 2014 & 2015
*Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick
*NAACP Image Award finalist, Outstanding Literary Work

Watch Trailer
Select a vendor:

‘Buck’ Synopsis

A rebellious boy’s journey through the wilds of urban America and the shrapnel of a self-destructing family–this is the riveting story of a generation told through one dazzlingly poetic new voice.

MK Asante was born in Zimbabwe to American parents: a mother who led the new nation’s dance company and a father who would soon become a revered pioneer in Black Studies. But things fell apart and a little more than a decade later MK was back in America, lost in a fog of drugs, sex, and violence on the streets of North Philadelphia. Now he was alone—his mother in an asylum, his father gone, his older brother locked up in a prison on the other side of the country—and forced to find his own way to survive physically, mentally, and spiritually, by any means necessary.

Buck is a powerful memoir of how a precocious kid educated himself through the most unconventional teachers—outlaws and eccentrics, rappers and mystic strangers, ghetto philosophers and strippers, and, eventually, an alternative school that transformed his life with a single blank sheet of paper. It’s a one-of-a-kind story about finding your purpose in life, and an inspiring tribute to the power of education, art, and love to heal and redeem us.

BUCK: ORIGINAL BOOK SOUNDTRACK

Buck-Soundtrack-Front-Cover-600px

Download-for-Free-Button Cropped

Today Show Interview

MK Asante has brunch with TODAY’s Craig Melvin to talk about his Snapchat show, “While Black,” his bestselling memoir, “Buck,” cultural sensitivity and how he uses his gift for language to lead discussions about issues.

MK visits Howard University memoir class

Visiting Prof. Patricia Elam's memoir class at Howard University, Spring, 2016. Shot and edited by Renato Flores. Music by Ace Clark - Runnin' ft. MK Asante (prod. Scarecrow Beats). Design by Ruben Rodriguez.

Unapoletically Buck

MK Asante, author of the memoir "Buck," talks to NBC Black about rendering his story in multiple forms - book, music, film - to reach as many people as possible. Story by Candace King.

Praise for ‘Buck’

  • “Frequently brilliant and always engaging… It takes great skill to render the wide variety of characters, male and female, young and old, that populate a memoir like "Buck." ... A powerful and captivating book."

    —LA Times Read Full Review

  • “Buck is a story of surviving and thriving with passion, compassion, wit and style. MK Asante’s story is necessary to us all.”

    —Maya Angelou Read Full Review

  • "Asante's noir chronicle is imaginative, powerful, and electric, written with passion and conviction."

    —Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review) Read Full Review

  • "The debut of a remarkable talent ... Asante’s prose is a fluid blend of vernacular swagger and tender poeticism."

    —Salon Read Full Review

  • “Asante is the voice of a new generation. . . . You will love nearly everything about Buck.”

    —Essence Read Full Review

  • “A virtuoso performance . . . [an] extraordinary page-turner of a memoir . . . written in a breathless, driving hip-hop prose style that gives it a tough, contemporary edge.”

    —The Philadelphia Inquirer Read Full Review

  • “This is an inspiring story about perseverance and finding purpose that is sure to appeal to readers interested in hip-hop, black studies, and American pop culture in general.”

    —Booklist (Starred Review)

  • "Lyrical prose ... moving account of growing up and out of the “Killadelphia” of the 1990s. ... All of which highly recommends this memoir."

    —Library Journal

  • “In America, we have a tradition of black writers whose autobiographies and memoirs come to define an era. . . . Buck may be this generation’s story.”

    —NPR Read Full Review

  • "MK Asante's Buck takes the daily words of the American streets and forges something low and lovely. Angry, profane and beautiful, it honors the best of hip-hop's literary canon, by producing a work worthy of inclusion. Here is crack era Philadelphia flipped into a phrase which we've so long needed, but so rarely heard."

    —Ta-nehisi Coates, senior editor, Atlantic Magazine

  • “MK Asante takes back the 90s Black American experience that we've seen chopped, screwed, co-opted and gives it an original voice singing a song that will force all of America to face what it has become and remember what it could be.”

    —Eddie Huang, author of Fresh Off The Boat

  • "Asante is a hip-hop raconteur, a storyteller in the Homeric tradition, an American, a rhymer, a big-thinker singing a song of himself. You’ll want to listen."

    —Buffalo News Read Full Review

  • "Captivating to say the least ..."

    —Ebony

  • "Every fifty years or so, a book is written with the power to change lives and reveal a totally new way of looking at the world. Buck is a work of genius and is such a book. To such writers as Dickens, Twain, Douglas, Lee, Angelou and Kerouac we now add the name Asante."

    —San Francisco Book Review Read Full Review

  • "Beautifully written and expertly told ode to the power of art and literature."

    —Los Angeles Magazine Read Full Review
Other Books

Tour Dates

01.29.25

DC Public Library

Washington DC

02.13.25

YSC Academy

Wayne, PA

02.25.25

Germantown Academy

Fort Washington, PA

02.28.25

Riverside City College

Riverside, CA