Singing Rumpelstiltskin

“That’s just the way it is” is what Ben Sims heard throughout his life when he questioned why he was treated differently from white children or coworkers. It was a sentence that did not sit well with him, and he kept that inquisitive mindset throughout his career in the Air Force, his university education, and his jobs with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He has encountered racism in various forms but vowed not to yield to its principles and limitations, and he has always found a way to expose and denounce it. In this book, Ben Sims tells how he experienced racism and other -isms from childhood to the final stages of his working career. And how he manages to keep looking life in the face with a smile.

From growing up in the woodland ghetto of Cleveland, Ohio, his complex relationship with his father and a loving relationship with his mother and siblings, having his heart broken twice and being accused once in elementary school because of the color of his skin, getting stabbed, joining the Air Force and the Freemasons, starting a music career in San Francisco in the late 1960s, playing basketball and singing in the Vietnam War, being stationed in Germany and facing a discharge hearing on false charges, and meeting people like Malcolm X, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Janis Joplin and being sacked from Isaac Hayes’ band, Ben Sims’s story is about a truly eventful life and one that resonates in 2021 because it shines a light on how Black people have to navigate society and succeed in spite of it.

“The most enlightening book I have ever read about what it is like being Black in America.” - Ako Shichiji, Manager Administrative Services, WABG Radio International