Much of Jess Mowry's life is still a mystery, even though he has attracted the attention of Hollywood and the literary community. One published account of his life says that he was born in Oakland, California, but the publishers of his novel Way Past Cool, Farrar Straus Giroux, claim he was born in Mississippi. In any case, both sources list his birth on March 27, 1960. Mowry grew up in Oakland, where he was raised by his father.

Educated only through the eighth grade, he spent much of his teen-age life on the streets of Oakland, even working briefly as a bodyguard for a drug dealer. As an adult, he has worked as a garbage hauler and yard cleaner. A strong concern for the welfare of youngsters led him to volunteer to work with children's organizations, bringing with him the experience of once being a youth on the streets of Oakland.

In 1988, using money he earned by recycling aluminum cans retrieved from dumpsters, Mowry purchased a used typewriter for eight dollars and began writing stories about early adolescent gang members living in the grittier parts of Oakland. These stories became Rats in the Trees, which won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award in 1990. At the time these stories were published, Mowry called a bus his home.

With the publication of Way Past Cool, he went from struggling for publication to the New York Times best-seller lists, receiving praise for his realistic account of the lives of early adolescents in the toughest parts of Oakland. In Way Past Cool, he demonstrated his mastery of the dialect of the young people who were his subjects and his ability to present their lives without sentimentality. Its sharp portrayal of unpleasant lives with unflinching candor has resulted in the novel often being placed in the adult section of libraries rather than the young adult section. Way Past Cool attracted the interest of motion picture producers, but Mowry soon earned the reputation of being hard-nosed about how his work would be presented. The author turned down large offers of money in fear that the subject matter of his work would be compromised by Hollywood producers searching for a good story. It took until 1998 for Way Past Cool to be made into a motion picture. His insistence that the young people of his fiction be honestly presented, even to the point of rejecting money that would make his life considerably more comfortable, has probably made a permanent imprint on the public perception of his persona—as a selfless man more committed to children than to himself.