Published in 2010
334 pages
Liz Murray completed high school and won a New York Times scholarship while homeless, and graduated from Harvard University in 2009. She has been awarded The White House Project Role Model Award, a Christopher Award, as well as the Chutzpah Award, which was given to Liz by Oprah Winfrey. Lifetime Television produced a film about Liz’s life, Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story. Today, she travels the world to deliver motivational speeches and workshops to inspire others. Liz is the founder and director of Manifest Trainings, a New York–based company that empowers adults to create the results they want in their own lives.
As a child, Liz Murray crammed cafeteria food in her backpack on Fridays so she could stave off starvation during the weekend. Now 29, she works with a non-profit organization called Blessings in a Backpack that supplies today’s children with food for the weekend when school cafeterias are closed. Liz says, “If I’d had access to a program like Blessings in a Backpack when I was an undernourished child in New York City, I may not have gone to bed hungry all those nights. Thankfully, with this organization’s continued commitment, thousands of children across America won’t have to.”
What is this book about?
In the vein of The Glass Castle, Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard.
Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls’ home. At age fifteen, when her family finally unraveled, Murray found herself on the streets. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep.
Eventually, Murray decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. She squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman’s indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.
