About this Event
About the Book
A raw and profound debut that chronicles coming of age as a transracial adoptee. A necessary addition to the modern canon of literary memoirs that explore race, identity, and belonging.
Erik Mohn was raised to believe that love was enough. America taught him otherwise. Born to a Black mother he never knew and adopted by a white family in small-town Massachusetts, Mohn grew up cherished yet unprepared for what his skin would mean in the world.
Stranger in My Own Story traces Mohn’s coming of age as he searches not just for identity but for language—words for grief, for anger, for belonging, for the silence left by a mother he lost and a father he could never quite reach. He pieces together meaning from what’s available and hip-hop becomes his first mirror and his first vocabulary—a survival guide passed through speakers and headphones.
As the cost of his cultural displacement begins to surface, Mohn is forced to confront the wounds he’s been carrying. Those reckonings come to a head at Howard University—“The Mecca”—where the self he assembled in isolation is tested in community, challenged in relationship, and slowly transformed.
Written with the lyrical pulse of hip-hop and a moral clarity forged in lived experience, Stranger in My Own Story is an intimate memoir of transracial adoption and a universal story about what it costs to grow up without a mirror—and what it takes to build one anyway. Mohn's story mirrors the nation's: unfinished, fragile, and still reaching toward wholeness.
About the Author
Erik Mohn is a writer and speaker whose work explores identity, belonging, and the stories we inherit and carry. His debut memoir, Stranger in My Own Story, chronicles his journey through transracial adoption, examining how race, culture, and masculinity shape the search for home and inviting readers to reclaim their stories with vulnerability and pride. He divides his time between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York.
About Kyle Boatwright
Kyle Boatwright (she/hers) is a theatermaker, editor, and educator based in the Pioneer Valley. She has served as a guest artist/lecturer at UMass, Smith College, Amherst College, and Hampshire Regional High School, and is a former board member and DEI consultant with Silverthorne Theater Company. An artist dedicated to the pursuit of justice and community, Kyle is co-founder of Rise Up Productions, a Valley collective of performing artists that produces shows to benefit social justice organizations. She also works as a developmental editor and sensitivity reader for new musical and literary pieces. Her work on stage mirrors her collaborations off stage, and select regional theater credits include, as actor: Fences (Majestic Theater), Bright Half Life (WAM Theater; Silverthorne Theater), and The Revolutionists (Silverthorne Theater). As director: Next to Normal; John Proctor is the Villain (UMass Amherst); Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Smith College). As associate/assistant: Twelfth Night; Jane Eyre (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). A frequent music director and designer, Kyle received her BA in Music Composition from Amherst College in 2009. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Directing at UMass Amherst, with a focus on performing and experiencing Blackness within predominantly white institutions.
Event venue & nearby stays
Odyssey Bookshop, 9 College Street, South Hadley, United States
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