Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

In Without A Compass, Martin Terrell recounts his childhood in Cincinnati’s West End, where poverty and segregation shape the boundaries of life before his mother’s death sends him into foster care. At Walnut Hills High School, Terrell discovers an aptitude for writing and begins to imagine college as a route beyond the neighborhood he knows. Returning to his stepfather’s home disrupts that direction as street life draws him into juvenile detention, homelessness, and drug use. Terrell finds purpose through Colonel Judah Abdul, a Black history teacher who brings him into the Black History and Culture Group. By using his writing to build connections with universities and activists, Terrell begins turning the abilities he discovered as a teenager toward a future he can define for himself.

Martin Terrell’s Without A Compass is a brilliant memoir, and I love how Terrell shares his changing understanding of himself through relationships that mark his life across several transformative decades in America. Terrell's emphasis on people is part of what makes his work so thoughtful, remembering those whose importance clearly still matters to him. We see it when he carries groceries for Miss Louise, and lets his neighbors know when Black performers appear on television. Terrell writes in conversational, accessible prose with a natural movement from lived scenes into inner response, such as hearing Dr. King at Brown Chapel leading him to recognize that he has found something he can believe in. Because Terrell keeps connecting public change to ordinary life, his story is valuable now. Readers understand racial self-definition through his decision to call himself Black, then see cultural change enter everyday thinking through his reconsideration of what “good hair” meant. Well written and moving, readers who enjoy Black American social history, especially readers drawn to autobiographical writing rooted closely in place, will adore this book.