A compelling coming-of-age story, set both in small-town Mississippi and big-city New York, with a long layover in the nation's capital. Karen Hinton chronicles her life from tiny Soso, Mississippi (pop. 408), to the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), where she played on the Lady Rebels basketball team, had embarrassing encounters with literary luminaries such as William Styron and Willie Morris, and received a degree in journalism . . . to stints at two newspapers, where she worked as a reporter-the Jackson Daily News and the Rocky Mountain News-to working on the political campaigns of two Black political candidates, one of whom was elected to Congress, thus becoming the first Black representative from Mississippi since Reconstruction. At the center of Hinton's incredible rise to the pinnacle of success was an undercurrent of men behaving badly. The role that "penis politics" played in Hinton's life began in childhood with school employees who demanded sexual favors from her female classmates-and extended throughout her life as she bore witness to the struggles that she and her friends and colleagues have undergone to deal with sexual abuse, sexual harassment and gender discrimination.