Harvard Book Store Virtual Event: Brandon Fleming

Harvard Book Store’s virtual event series welcomes BRANDON FLEMING—assistant coach of debate at Harvard University and founder of the Harvard Diversity Project—for a discussion of his memoir Miseducated. He will be joined in conversation by acclaimed, bestselling writer NIC STONE, author of Dear Martin and Dear Justyce.

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About Miseducated

Brandon P. Fleming grew up in an abusive home and was shuffled through school, his passing grades a nod to his skill on the basketball court, not his presence in the classroom. He turned to the streets and drug deals by fourteen, saved only by the dream of basketball stardom.

When he suffered a career-ending injury during his first semester at a Division I school, he dropped out of college, toiling on an assembly line, until depression drove him to the edge. Miraculously, his life was spared.

Returning to college, Fleming was determined to reinvent himself as a scholar—to replace illiteracy with mastery over language, to go from being ignored and unseen to commanding attention. He immersed himself in the work of Black thinkers from the Harlem Renaissance to present day. Crucially, he found debate, which became the means by which he transformed his life and the tool he would use to transform the lives of others—teaching underserved kids to be intrusive in places that are not inclusive, eventually at Harvard University, where he would make champions and history.

Through his personal narrative, readers witness Fleming’s transformation, self-education, and how he takes what he learns about words and power to help others like himself. Miseducated is an honest memoir about resilience, visibility, role models, and overcoming all expectations.

Praise for Miseducated

“Miseducated is a stunningly crafted book exploring the radical possibilities of what happens when a Black child who ‘hates’ school finds the language, tones, and practice to contextualize and precisely state why he rightfully resents the parts of American formal education system that hated him. In that way, the book is not so much about a prelapsarian kind of renewal, but a full hearted conjuring of an equitable future. I learned how to learn and how to teach again in Miseducated. This is breathtaking art and heart work.” —Kiese Laymon, New York Timesbestselling author of Heavy: An American Memoir

“Miseducated touched my soul. From the very first sentence to the last, I was riveted. Only one other book has affected my soul so profoundly. It was my great-great grandfather’s Narrative—and, fatefully, the book that happened to change Brandon’s life.” —Nettie Washington Douglass, great-great granddaughter of Frederick Douglass, great-granddaughter of Booker T. Washington, Cofounder & Chairwoman of Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives

“Despite seemingly insurmountable barriers standing in his way, Brandon P. Fleming reinvented himself in similar ways as the Black scholars who shaped him. Frederick Douglass, beginning his quest for literacy, ‘set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble,’ and Fleming, consciously continuing Douglass’s tradition in Black autobiography, likewise set out to learn and eventually teach and inspire a new generation of black thinkers. Inspiring, heartbreaking and gripping, Miseducated is pure motivation.” —Tripp Rebrovick, PhD, Director of Debate, Harvard University