ANTHONY ALEMAN
AUTHOR • SPEAKER • FOUNDER, BARLESS PRESS
Author of BARLESS: A Bronx Memoir — exploring how childhood survival becomes adult identity.
Media • Speaking • Author Events
THE BOY BEHIND BARLESS
I didn’t know anything was wrong. I had nothing else to compare my life to.
BARLESS forced me to confront a different question: what happens when the things that helped a child survive become part of the adult he believes himself to be?
Childhood survival becomes adult identity.
ABOUT BARLESS
BARLESS: A Bronx Memoir tells the story of a boy growing up in the South Bronx surrounded by hunger, neglect, and instability — without realizing anything was wrong because he had nothing to compare it to.
It’s not just a story about trauma. It’s about identity, and how childhood survival can become adult identity.
FEATURED AND APPEARING
In Real Life: Foster Care Unfiltered
August 24, 2026
BronxNet OPEN
Television interview
Airing August 26, 2026
Nyack Library Local Author Panel
October 7, 2026
LARC Local Author Fair
Haverstraw King's Daughters Public Library
November 8, 2026
BOOK ANTHONY
Anthony Aleman is an author and speaker whose work explores a question at the heart of BARLESS: A Bronx Memoir: What happens when the things that helped a child survive become part of the adult he believes himself to be?
Drawing from his childhood in the South Bronx, his experience in kinship foster care and adoption, and the process of writing BARLESS, Anthony speaks from lived experience about childhood, identity, the invisible walls we build to protect ourselves, and what happens when those walls outlive the danger they were built for.
Childhood Survival Becomes Adult Identity
What if something you’ve called your personality for years actually began as a way to survive?
When Abnormal Feels Normal
What neglect looks like through the eyes of a child who has nothing else to compare life to.
The Barless Prison
How emotional walls can protect us when we need them—and later begin limiting the life we’re trying to build.
Foster Care & Adoption From the Inside
One person’s lived experience of kinship foster care and adoption, including what adults and systems can see—and what they can miss.
The South Bronx & the Geography of Normal
How a child’s environment shapes what feels ordinary, possible, dangerous, and worth questioning.
Writing to Answer “Why Am I the Way I Am?”
How writing a memoir became an investigation into identity—and why Anthony refused to give the child on the page knowledge only the adult possessed.
Available for keynotes, author talks, panels, college and university programs, child-welfare and foster-care organizations, libraries, conferences, media interviews, and community conversations.
© 2026 Barless Press