Melodie Shuler

Only the Strong Survive with the Grace of God Melodie Shuler

This autobiography is Ms. Shuler's personal exploration of this world with a personal in depth view of her life. She takes a journey through difficult periods of her life as a child from the inner city who grows up with a poor, single mother who dreamed of becoming an attorney. This story is an awakening to the difficult odds children from the inner-city have to overcome and the strength Ms. Shuler gained to survive childhood sexual abuse, homelessness, rapes, assaults, drug use, and then even after law school false arrests, a false criminal conviction, domestic violence, sexism and racism. Ms. Shuler connects her background with public policy which seeks to maintain a status quo at the expense of citizens' rights. She point to this nation's promise of all having the unalienable right to quest for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as a contradiction because she proclaims, "So many like I rarely see the promise of justice for all fulfilled and received by all." She describes former presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as slave owners, rapists and father of bi-racial children they held captured as slaves. She writes: This country was built on lies. It is claimed that George Washington was honest and told his father, "I cannot tell a lie..." Well he may not have been able to tell a lie but he certainly lived one. He was a slave owner, a rapist, a father of a bi-racial child(ren) just like former president Thomas Jefferson. Only the Strong Survive "by the grace of God" explains that there is light at the end of the tunnel, sunshine after rain, hope for the hopeless and a world for those whom life has not been very fair with," says Agenyi Arome, "I saw through the eye of faith that to every man who believes he can make it, even when situations around him tells him all hope is lost he attains the greatest heights of achievement; because he dares to believe he can..." "It is an awakening, an inspiration, it is a message to all to - DARE TO DREAM."