Will Allen, the author and the CEO of Growing Power, weaves stories from his family history in with lessons learned from his adventures in urban agriculture to give readers an understanding of what stands in the way of healthy food for all American communities. With a combination of inherited agricultural know-how, determination, a competitive spirit, and lots of help from his family and community, Allen has created a novel approach to growing fresh food in inhospitable and blighted urban communities. Allen also draws on lessons he learned—from his career as a professional basketball player in America and in Belgium and while working as a sales representative—in his descriptions of his accomplishments and his challenges. Winner of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 2008, Allen also seeks to inspire and teach others to carry on the traditions of farming and to enjoy the healthful fruits of one’s own labor, whether the outcomes are edible or educational. 

Allen’s mother, Willie Mae Kenner, grew up in a sharecropping family in South Carolina, and she received a teaching degree from a two-year college set up after the Civil War for freed slaves. Although she valued education highly, both as a personal goal and as a professional one, Willie Mae was never able to work as a teacher as the demands of her family life kept her working on the land.