Ivan McClellan

I was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas.

Go Chiefs.

The neighborhood that I grew up in had many sides.

It was urban and country at the same time.

It was beautiful, and sometimes it could be terrifying.

My sister and I would run around in a five acre field behind our house all summer long and we would play and we would eat blackberries until our fingers were sticky and then we'd run home through the thistle, pick thorns out of our socks on the front porch.

And then at twilight, the lightning bugs would come out and we'd scoop them up in mason jars, throw some leaves in there, screw the lid on tight, poke holes in the top so they could breathe.

At night, some nights, gunshots would ring out on the block.

and my sister and I would lay on the floor and look up as the police helicopters lit up the street looking for suspects.

There were a lot of gangs in the neighborhood, and they would walk around with pit bulls, and whenever they ran across a rival gang member, they would fight their dogs.

I wasn't in a gang.

I was a nerd and a church kid, but when I ran across this one guy, he would stick his dog on me, and I would go running, and all the backs of my pants got eaten up, and I got really fast.

My mom worked two or three jobs to keep us fed, and we were latchkey kids.

And we determined it was unsafe to go outside, so we quit going out in that field and playing.

As I got closer to the end of high school, my prospects were kind of slim.

I could go be a delivery truck driver, I could be a pastor at my uncle's church, or I could go work at the assembly line at the Ford plant.

I didn't really want to do any of those things.

I wanted to be a photographer.

And so I decided I was going to figure out a way out of Kansas.

I never felt like I fit in there, and I knew somewhere there was a community where I belonged.