As an infant, Kim Boykin made headlines as she was the first baby to weigh less than pound and live. Now, decades later, she’s writing a book about how her life began as a tiny baby struggling for air. And that struggle for air has since been a theme for her life. The book is called A Black Mother’s Cry. Her book illustrates what it is like to be a mother. It’s not a flowery novel about the ideal mother. It’s not a self-help book full of solutions. Rather, it is an unfiltered look into the darkest moments in a mother’s life.

In our interview with Kim Boykin, we talk about how–like the so-called “chain of poverty”–there is also a “chain of bad parenting” which is difficult to break. For those who have been raised in less-than-ideal family situations, Kim Boykin offers a voice of resilience and persistence.