Rise Above

Renzo Rollins Schnipper was born in February 2020, a split second before the beginning of the pandemic. To his parents, he was the reason for the universe’s existence at a time when there was little hope to be found in the world. Then, on Christmas Eve 2021, a rare medical event suddenly took Renzo from them.

Rise Above begins with an account of Renzo’s short, but blazingly full, life from his father’s perspective. Even as it is an account of grief, Matthew Schnipper’s memoir is about resilience in the face of the unexpected turns life takes, and how to chart a path forward.

Schnipper chronicles the tragic, frustrating, and sometimes dumb ways that grief manifests, and how he tried to rise above the pain: friendships, text messages, carbs, a trip to Miami, phone calls with a rabbi, selling vintage clothing—and, perhaps most indelibly, his ever-changing relationship to music, his lifelong passion.