Danny Cardwell
By Simba Sana
Agate Publishing, 260 pp.,
It would be easy to categorize
“Never Stop” as a postmodern Horatio Alger novel set in an urban community. This
memoir has all the ingredients of a rag to riches story. But such a reading has
the potential to render all of the pain, failure, and life lessons chronicled
throughout its 260 pages invisible. This isn’t fiction. Each shattered life and
every violent death can be traced to an easily locatable time in place in our
not too distant past.
Simba Sana’s childhood could be
described as catastrophic. His father was a no show. He was raised by a single
mother with mental health issues. He grew up in Washington, D.C., at a time when
crack was replacing PCP as the drug of choice, and guns were replacing fistfights
as the preferred method for settling disputes. He survived a gauntlet of racial
and socioeconomic pitfalls that consumed many of his peers. Any of these
obstacles could have derailed or ended his life before he attended Gonzaga College
High School and then Mount Saint Mary’s University.
Simba’s escape from inner-city
violence and poverty is inspiring. If the book had ended with him getting a
college degree it would have been a story worth telling, but it didn’t. Simba shares
the mistakes he made during his time in corporate America, his successes and
failures as co-owner of Karibu Books: the largest independent Black owned chain
of book stores in America, and his mostly negative experiences managing boxers.
The money and prestige that
came with entrepreneurship couldn’t fill the gaping holes in his life. At no
point during his socioeconomic ascension did Simba “have it all”. His
professional endeavors were periodically hindered by his militant Pan-African ideology
and inability to maintain meaningful relationships with the opposite sex. He
was driven to succeed, but at times unable to enjoy his success.
Simba had to lose everything
in order to rebuild his life around love. He made a conscious effort to
critically think about and challenge his personal philosophy and spirituality. When
he finally found his place in the world, he chose to, In the words of John Hope
franklin, “Use his history and ingenuity, his resources and talents, to combat
the forces that isolate[d] him and…contribute to the solution of the problems
that all Americans face in common.”
“Never Stop” belongs on a shelf
beside the Black existentialists works that helped foster its creation. Alex
Haley’s “Autobiography of Malcolm X” guided a young Simba Sana through his
undergraduate years at Mount Saint Mary’s University, but it was close readings
of James Baldwin that forced him to cultivate a self instead of replicating
one. Near the end of the book Sana writes:
Contemplating
the life and work of Malcolm X helped me understand the risks of trying to
emulate someone else, no matter how great that person may be. If discovering who
I am is the way to fulfillment, then by continuing to follow Malcolm, I ran the
risk of making my hero’s issues my own.
“Never Stop” is about
self-actualization, love, and inner-peace. There are times when it meanders, but
not enough to distract from its narrative thrust. Sana shares all of the pain
and shame it took for him to recognize and ultimately address his personal shortcomings.
If Nathan McCall’s “Makes Me Wanna Holler” resonated with you in your teens or
twenties, then “Never Stop” will speak to you in your thirties and forties.
