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When I read a book I love, I always think to myself, “Oh man, I wish I could ask the author about this line.” While reading the advance copy of former Congressman Jamaal Bowman’s upcoming memoir, Unpolished, I was grateful for the chance to actually get to do that ahead of the book’s November 17 release.
A few pages into his prologue, I hit a passage that described Trump as the latest host of an American disease Bowman called “The Hunger.” I texted him right away to tell him how much that line resonated with me. I had to hold myself back from blowing his phone up as I read more, because his book hit me at a profound level. Not just as a Black man, but as someone trying to make America a better place.
The framework of our conversation, just as it was in his book, was Bowman’s description of “The Hunger” and “The Healing.” We covered his childhood split between the East River Projects and Yorkville, tumultuous teenage years that nearly killed him, and a principal training program where coaches called him too “Unpolished.” From there, we got into the Bronx middle school he built into one of the best in the city, and the congressional race he lost in 2024 for making comments that are now mainstream in Democratic politics.
A lot of this hit close to home. As a Black man, I saw myself in his fights, his football years, and his rebellious streak. When I brought up losing my childhood best friend to gun violence, Bowman met me there with an idea he calls “survivor’s responsibility.” That stretch of the conversation is the one I’ll remember most.
We closed on the present. Bowman laid out how the Democratic Party can better serve the communities they represent, and answered the question he says follows him everywhere: Will he run for office again? His short answer: “Maybe, probably, we’ll see.” His longer answer… well, I’ll let you decide for yourself if this is a person who is still committed to the fight for democracy.
I appreciate those of you who tuned in live and contributed so much to the conversation, and those of you who pre-ordered Bowman’s book. I know he was super grateful.
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You can watch our full conversation above. And, as always, thank you for supporting independent media.
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Naming The Disease
Everyone calls Trump a symptom. I pointed out that almost nobody names the disease. Bowman does, and he spent real time explaining what falls under “The Hunger” and what it takes to fight it.
One word for many diseases. Bowman said it took him a long time to find a phrase for the forces he kept circling: racism, sexism, poverty, war, and genocide. The Hunger became his umbrella term, covering everything from neocolonial resource extraction to a plantation capitalism that profits off the poverty of children.
It was in the news that day. He pointed to the Cornell Seven, the case dominating the media, in which seven men drugged and raped a woman on campus. He called sexual violence that goes unreported and unpunished a bacterial disease of the mind. Gun violence we refuse to address belongs in the same category.
The Healing starts with a conversation. Bowman said the fight can be as simple as two people trying to make sense of the world together. Watching Trump’s fascism deepened his respect for the First Amendment, because speech, press, religion, and the right to organize are the tools of healing.
A Tale Of Two Cities
I asked Bowman about a childhood split between two very different parts of New York City. He summed it up in one line: Yorkville was freedom, East River was bondage.
Built for confinement. He lived in East River with his grandmother until she died of a stroke at 54, when he was seven or eight. He described courtyards designed to keep kids in place, physically and psychologically.
Policy got his family out. His mother, a single mom on a postal worker’s salary, could afford Yorkville because of Mitchell-Lama. Writing about the doorman building, Bowman said he could feel his body relax the way it did when he walked in as a kid. He noted that kids in unsafe neighborhoods never get that release.
A galaxy for a nickel. At eight, he walked across Central Park to the Museum of Natural History, where a few cents got him into the planetarium. At home, his sister’s pink radio played DJ Red Alert spinning Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh.
Imagination comes first. Bowman argued that when we suppress a child’s imagination, the political and social revolution we need becomes impossible. You have to imagine a new world before you can build it. He said unlocking that in every child is why he wrote the book.
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Survivor’s Responsibility
Yorkville opened doors that Bowman’s best friends never got. This was the most personal part of the conversation, for both of us.
Three friends, three mothers. Bowman stopped me before we moved on to hip hop because he wanted people to understand who got left behind. One best friend’s mother died of alcohol poisoning. Another struggled with heroin, and a third was killed for her welfare check when her son was seven.
From guilt to obligation. Bowman said trauma and death were a constant part of growing up. He said he calls what he carries survivor’s responsibility: a commitment to ride for the people who never got his chances. I told him about one of my childhood best friends, Mike Gray, who was killed by a gunshot to the neck. I related heavily to this.
The streets pulled hard. His football dreams and his mother’s protection kept him from going too far, but barely. He tried selling crack for about 45 minutes, got into fights, survived three shootouts, and was beaten by police at age 12. He described getting caught in the cycle of poverty and violence as The Hunger consuming you from the outside.
A report card saved him. In 10th grade, he failed every class. He moved in with his father in Sayreville, New Jersey, where there was nothing to do but homework. That began his healing.
My version. I struggled with alcohol and smoked too much in high school, and a car accident woke me up. I told Bowman I rarely met an uber-successful Black person whose road was smooth. Obama’s story inspired me growing up, but Columbia and Harvard Law aren’t relatable to most Black kids. Bowman’s path is.
Origins Of “Unpolished”
The title of the book started as a critique. Bowman told the full story, and it became a conversation about the kind of authenticity American society allows.
Bowman’s interesting fact. At the first dinner of New Leaders for New Schools, a competitive national principal program, everyone was asked to share something interesting, and everyone listed accomplishments. Bowman told the room he’d had a 2.49 GPA in undergrad. Only one person caught the point: look how far he’d come.
“Too unpolished.” Days before he defended his school proposal, two coaches pulled him aside and cited the GPA story as evidence. He told them he had no interest in being polished in an oppressive system. The city approved his school for September 2009.
Assimilation as survival. When I said the times eventually catch up to authenticity, Bowman added a hard truth. Black parents teach one priority above all: getting home safe, and that means speaking and acting a certain way. He argued schools train kids to be polished cogs, when America’s founding promise is a home for the unpolished.
The founding fathers were unpolished. I pointed out that every movement worth anything made people uncomfortable, from the bus boycotts to the American Revolution itself. Bowman called that a bar. People still use the polished argument to tell progressives not to shake things up.
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Hip Hop: The CNN Of The Hood
Every chapter of Unpolished is named after a hip hop track. For both of us, hip hop was where politics first made sense.
Made from thin air. Bowman described kids stripped of every resource who rose from the ashes and built an art form, a culture, and an economy that changed the world. DJing, graffiti, breaking, and MCing came out of nothing. He said nothing is more unpolished than that.
A table of contents that tells the story. His high school chapter is “Know The Ledge,” from the “Juice” movie soundtrack, when every kid in New York wanted to be Tupac. “Represent” by Nas marks his arrival in Sayreville.
A civil rights tool. He cited Chuck D calling hip hop the “CNN of the hood” and KRS-One calling it a revolutionary tool. Hip hop has been revolutionary. Not just in telling the raw truth of the Black community, but in putting people of every background in the same room, moving to the same music.
Tupac raised me too. I told Bowman that Tupac taught me about social justice, so much so that I wore a Tupac chain in middle school.
The backlash theory. I argued Trump was partly a response to hip hop becoming the mainstream culture just as Obama took office. When white kids across campuses were reciting every rap lyric, a lot of white people got scared.
Bowman’s Educational Philosophy: Knowledge Of Self
Bowman never planned to teach. But once he walked into a school, he said, it felt like exactly where God wanted him.
Check your pulse, you’re hired. A job interview in lower Manhattan asked for his philosophy of education, and he had nothing. In the South Bronx’s District 9, they took one look at him and asked if he was ready. He called it another tale of two Americas: resourced communities can afford philosophy, while the Bronx needed bodies.
Whatever the private schools did, his kids deserved it too. At CASA, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, his rule was simple. If wealthy private schools offered it, his kids would get it. That meant writing grant proposals for technology so students could learn to code.
Community Circles. Every Friday, students gathered for music, inspirational videos, and speeches from figures like Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Angela Davis. Bowman said his philosophy finally came into focus: anchor everything in knowledge of self, the lesson he learned from Rakim, Chuck D, and KRS-One.
Lost Einsteins. Bowman said the study landed because Black and white kids score at the same level in third grade, but white kids grow up in communities that nurture their brilliance. He said CASA went from a B to an A school and later posted the top combined growth scores in the city.
Why he ran for office. Kids kept dying, from suicide and from violence. He couldn’t live with it as a principal, which is why gun violence and the Green New Deal for Public Schools became his focus in Congress.
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Democracy Is A Contact Sport
Trump leaves office in two years, and he's only a symptom of a deeper disease. So I asked Bowman what Democrats should stand for beyond beating him. I argued affordability alone won’t get the party there. Bowman agreed and went further.
Policy is the easy part. He listed taxing the rich, Supreme Court term limits and expansion, ethics reform, ending the filibuster, and reexamining the Electoral College. The harder demand is presence: boots on the ground in communities where he said the party needs to shut up and listen.
A new kind of Democrat. He pointed to Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, the Squad, and a wave of progressives who grow the electorate by energizing people who skip primaries. He contrasted them with moderate Democrats.
Debate is a sign of health. I said I’d rather have a party arguing over how best to represent people than a Republican Party that has become an immovable authoritarian personality cult. I also noted Bowman was primaried for positions that are now mainstream.
“You started a revolution.” A Black man from the Bronx stopped Bowman outside the gym to tell him his race highlighted AIPAC’s influence and big money in politics. Bowman was careful not to cast himself as a martyr, citing Ayanna Pressley’s warning against progressives martyring Black leaders and then forgetting them. But he said his race put everyone on game.
Maybe, probably, we’ll see. I asked Bowman if he would ever run for office again. Bowman said he runs a firm helping campaigns with communications, field, and fundraising. Then he said plainly that he’s interested in running again, without naming an office, and floated serving a future administration on education.
Bottom Line
Bowman’s framework gives the disease a name, but his life gives The Healing a shape. It looks like a single mom in a Mitchell-Lama apartment, a kid in a planetarium, a failed report card motivating a change, and a Friday assembly with Nas on the speakers. None of it was polished. All of it worked.
Everyone asks Bowman when he’s running again. After this conversation, I’m more interested in how many kids will read his book and be impacted. Unpolished is out November 17, and you can preorder it at unpolishedbook.com.
We talked more about the political moment and Bowman’s time in Congress in our previous Substack Live conversation. You can check that out here:
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