[When Dennis Brutus came to teach at The University of Texas at Austin in 1974-75, he lived in my house during the fall semester and we became good friends. I used to ask him about his life experiences, and he would tell me one story after another, some of them funny, some nostalgic, others quite sad, but all of them exceptionally interesting. He had had a most remarkable life. I tried to encourage him to write these narratives up, but he didn't feel inclined to take the time to do this, so I suggested that he talk them into a tape recorder instead. He liked this idea and began recording almost immediately. This went on at intervals throughout the term. Sometimes he would talk about his political work, other times about his poetry or his family or his experiences as a student, a teacher or a prisoner. The tapes were transcribed by students employed part-time by the African and Afro- American Studies and Research Center, and Dennis usually checked the transcripts for accuracy. What follows here is the corrected text of the first tape in the series, when he was trying to construct a chronology of important events in his life, some of which he would expand upon at greater length in subsequent tapes. The typed transcript includes a number of handwritten additions which, when legible, have been inserted here parenthetically. Editorial interventions are indicated by square brackets. Misspellings of names and places as well as other errors, when known, have been corrected silently. Tape recorded early in September 1974.]