One hand over the other.
That’s how you climbed to where you are now. One rung at a time, hand over hand, until you reach the intended goal. Yes, sometimes you went backward before you ascended again, or you had to move sideways past a barrier. And sometimes, as in the new memoir, “Yet Here I Am” by Jonathan Capehart, you got a hand up.
His mother refused to talk about it.
When little Jonathan Capehart inquired about his father, who died just months after Capehart was born, he was met with a look that told him not to ask again. He didn’t learn the truth until he was well out of childhood: his father had left Capehart’s mother long before Capehart’s birth, and though the man visited afterward, “he didn’t stay long….”
The loss stung, but things turned out well anyhow. Capehart had many father figures throughout his life, paternal relatives who kept him in the family loop, and his maternal grandpa who played a big part in Capehart’s upbringing. Young Capehart spend his summers in Severn, North Carolina, playing, visiting, gathering lessons and wisdom from his mother’s parents and aunts. In Severn, extended family was everywhere, and it’s where many of Capehart’s best childhood memories spring.
He also has many cherished memories of his mother, and books. He was always a reader, and schoolmates recognized it. They also “knew I was a little ‘funny’,” he muses because, at 10 years old, he knew he was gay. His mother had had to teach him the hard truths in “how to be Black in white spaces” but college friends gave him safety for “self-discovery.”
Also at the tender age of ten, Capehart became fascinated with electronic media, and decided that he wanted to work at NBC, later interning at the Today show for two summers. At nineteen, he met a mentor who demanded excellence, and who shaped Capehart’s career.
Twelve years later, that same mentor offered Capehart his own MSNBC show…
As memoirs go, “Yet Here I Am” is a solid okay.
It’s not earth-shattering, nor is it wildly fascinating. It’s not exciting or heart-wrenching or even all that emotional, but it’s not terrible, either. Overall, it’s smack-center, a “5” on a one-to-10 scale, and there we are.
Moving from his middle-class childhood in which he vaguely understood the racism present in his mother’s hometown, to a wildly successful career in media and the mentors who helped him get where he is, author Jonathan Capehart shares his story with a casual tone that’s calm and matter-of-fact. Readers get a nice look at the workings of journalism and what it’s like to win a Pulitzer Prize, but if you’re expecting the kind of excitement you want in a deadline-racing newsroom, it’s not here; instead, Capehart writes in a decidedly unruffled manner that’s really pretty tame.
Still, Capehart fans will absolutely want to read this memoir for its thoughtfulness and its satisfactory ending. Not a fan? Then “Yet Here I Am” could be a long climb.
“Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home” by Jonathan Capehart
c.2025, Grand Central $30 272 pages
