Never Stop: A Memoir - Softcover

A candid testimony of struggle and achievement. —Kirkus Reviews

An amazing story of overcoming challenges and turning setbacks into incredible comebacks. Captivating and compelling. —Dr. Willie Jolley, bestselling author of A Setback Is a Setup for a Comeback

Never Stop reminds us with bold honesty that sometimes we have to lose everything to gain the unimaginable something greater. —Patrice Gaines, author of Laughing in the Dark

A brutally honest and powerful memoir written with an open heart. Ultimately a story of triumph, love, and success, Never Stop is also a story of the struggles that often accompany our search for personal peace. This is a book that gives you the courage to examine your own life and the permission to change it. —Bruce Babashan, USA boxing coach

Never Stop starts out as a powerful account of achieving worldly success against all odds and turns into a deeply intimate search for personal peace, fulfillment, love, and healing. Simba Sana was the cofounder and longtime leader of the Karibu bookstore chain, perhaps the most successful black-owned company in the history of the book industry. His story reveals how his experience with Karibu jump–started his lifelong journey to better understanding himself, human nature, faith, and American culture—which ultimately helped him develop the powerful personal philosophy that drives his life today.

Born Bernard Sutton in Washington, DC, the son of a mentally ill single mother, Sana grew up in the cycle of poverty and violence that dominated inner-city life in the 70s and 80s. Despite a bout of homelessness and deep involvement with street crime, Sana s academic success got him into college, where he flourished. Committed to self-improvement and self-discipline, he became a successful professional while also becoming an impassioned Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist. He lived the corporate life at Ernst & Young by day while leading radical consciousness-raising groups by night.

Building Karibu became Sana s opportunity to bind the disparate elements of his life together. Ultimately, though, the paradoxes in his identity and his accumulated emotional wounds confounded his effort to overcome his business reversals, and everything Sana built—his marriage, family, and business—was lost in a calamitously brief period of time. Sana had to rebuild his life—and his identity—and set out to do so in a way that focused principally on the meaning and importance of love.

Never Stop, in the tradition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and other great personal narratives, is alternately wrenching and inspiring—and one of the most important memoirs to be published this year.

Simba Sana is the cofounder and former leader of Karibu Books, a major indie bookselling phenomenon. Based in his native Washington, DC, Karibu was perhaps the most successful black-owned book-industry business ever. A former amateur boxer and manager of two professional super-middleweight boxers, Sana graduated from Mount Saint Mary's University with a double major in accounting and business. He later earned a masters degree in African Studies from Howard University and a masters degree in liberal arts from St. John's College. Sana lives in Maryland with his wife and three children.