My Awesome Place: Autobiography of Cheryl Burke

An unlikely story for someone whose guidance counselor recommended a career as a toll taker on the New Jersey Turnpike, Burke was determined to escape her circumstances by any means available-physical, intellectual or psychotropic. Her rise to prominence as the spoken word artist known as Cheryl B brought with it a series of desctructive girlfriends and boyfriends and a dependence on drugs and alcohol that would take nearly a decade to shake.

In the months following her death, members of Burke's close-knit writing group, who had met continuously for nine years, worked to compile her drafts, essays and emails into a completed manuscript which was eventually synthesized into its final form by Burke's close friend, novelist Sarah Schulman. This autobiography tracks her struggle to transcend her working class New Jersey roots and define herself as an artist against the backdrop of an unforgiving city, a series of disastrous girlfriends and boyfriends, and an intense, intimate relationship with drugs and alcohol. By the time Burke got sober in 2001, she had witnessed-and made major contributions to- one of the most remarkable artistic transformations that New York City has ever experienced.