American Impostor

This is a memoir about my life between 2015 and 2020, where I was part of an international crime ring and my subsequent arrest and imprisonment in a 3rd world country. Here's the synopsis:

When I was 27, I started taking American and British University entrance exams for foreign nationals for money. I worked with an agency that paid for my flights, my accommodation, and sent me a forged passport to gain entry to the exams. I was paid a lot per exam. I had an advantage over other test-takers-- English was my native language and I could travel to countries that were inaccessible to others with my American passport. I was able to score perfect on the exams I took, but on some tests like the GRE, I would under-score on purpose to avoid detection.

I used the money to travel the world and live the life I'd always dreamed of. I'd never enjoyed my home city of Chicago due to perceptions of my race, and I'd found that I was much happier abroad. I lived and learned about the world and myself in Tokyo, Shanghai, Bangkok, Seoul, Hong Kong, Paris, Berlin, Cairo, Istanbul, and more. Those were the best years of my life.

When I was 30, the ACT sent a detective team to hunt me down in Thailand. I was sentenced to 18 months in prison. I started writing this memoir wedged between hot bodies on a makeshift pencil made from rubber bands and lead. We lived in overcrowded prisons where we slept on top of each other, often sharing parasites. The food was just leftover parts of animals that the prison could buy cheaply: pig fat with the bristles still connected, chicken heads and feet.

AMERICAN IMPOSTOR is about identity, media, justice, and is completed to its first draft.