".Feelings remained locked, in little cages, without keys. Faces hid behind masks, concealing what we couldn't say, must not feel, did not see. Silence instructed us, to act or not to act. We were many but never more than he. It was strange yet normal. We were a family without voice until I spoke..." From modern poet and writer Cassandra Smith comes a powerful and eloquent book of poetry.

Remnants of the Mosaic of My Life is a chronicle that connects readers with one who experienced her youth on the Inner City streets of New York, coped with an abusive family relationship, and is now emerging from her struggles to come to terms with her painful past. Smith's poems have an immediacy to them that enables readers to be in those moments of captured time with her, as she gives voice not only to the depths of anguish and the bitingly humorous, but to a vision of hope.