My Life in the Sunshine

January 1, 2022

Ayers is the son of a white, Jewish former ballerina who chose to have a child with celebrated Black jazz musician Roy Ayers despite knowing that he would never be involved in parenting. The author met his father only a few times but sees his influence in everything he has done, from opening a record store in Seattle to touring with alternative rock bands. A meditation on the meaning of family--it's not just DNA--with Ayers meeting several half-siblings and befriending a descendant of the man who enslaved an ancestor.

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April 15, 2022
A biracial drummer and music industry entrepreneur reflects on his life and attempts to reconnect with his legendary jazz musician father. Ayers' Black father, Roy, had always been "a mythical figure who barely exist[ed] in real life, but who always exist[ed] through his music." His mother, a Jewish convert to the Baha'i faith, went out with Roy three times before asking him to get her pregnant. He agreed, on the condition she raise the baby alone. Roy's absence did not diminish the happy, though sometimes impoverished, life that Nabil shared with his mother and her musician brother, who helped care for Ayers. Like his father and uncle, the author gravitated to music, eventually learning to play the drums. His eclectic musical tastes, which ranged from jazz to rock and new wave, reflected his background as "a racially mixed kid." Ayers and his mother moved from New York City to Salt Lake City, where he decided on a career as a professional drummer despite knowing that his favorite bands on MTV were White. "The stars I admired didn't have Afros," he writes. "I began to worry mine would hold me back." It was around this time he developed interests in bands that blended a variety of styles, and he went on to play for the Lemons and Alien Crime Syndicate and open a successful West Coast indie music store. When Ayers returned to New York to become a music industry executive, he attempted to contact the elusive father he had seen only a handful of times, but their relationship never amounted to more than a few often disappointing visits. Nonetheless, DNA testing and essays he published on racial identity allowed the author to find other members of Roy's family, who accepted him with open arms. In a moving and candid memoir, Ayers memorably probes the meaning of family while offering unique insight into the racialized world of the American music industry. A searchingly eloquent memoir of music and family.

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June 27, 2022
Musician and entrepreneur Ayers explores the intricacies of race and belonging in his penetrating debut, a reflection on his career and his father. Born in 1972 to a white mother and Black father, Ayers struggled early on to feel like he fit in, a feeling compounded by his estrangement from his father, Jazz composer and producer Roy Ayers. Even still, Ayers cultivated a deep passion for music while growing up, eventually carving a space for himself in the industry, landing an internship at PolyGram Records and touring across America with his band, the Lemons, in the early 1990s. At age 34, with the encouragement of his therapist, Ayers had his first real conversation with Roy, a talk that ultimately put him on a path to healing and a discovery that he wasn’t Roy’s only child. Learning about his roots, and how his ancestors had been enslaved, allowed Ayers to find a sense of identity and peace. “For the first time in my life,” he writes, “I was directly connected to my Black ancestors.... And for the first time in my life, I could claim my Black side without self-doubt, without hesitation.” Rather than offer a simple tale of reconciliation, Ayers dives into complexities of race, identity, and family and surfaces with a probing story of finding home and self-acceptance. This is a true delight.