Powerful Summer Reading - You Are Your Best Thing, edited by Tarana Burke and Brene Brown

This book is written to give voice to the experiences of Black people. Too often, they may be only be seen at those who are impacted most directly by racism. That is a part of their identity, and they also live lives of blessing and strength and challenge.

This book is a collection of essays from writers, artists, educators, activists and others. They speak in the first person, in Tarana Burke's words, to "give our humanity breathing room."

You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience, edited by Tarana Burke and Brene Brown.

From the introduction by the editors:

Brene: I kept thinking about bell hook's concept of lovelessness and how she talks about lovelessness as the root of white supremacy and the patriarchy and all forms of oppression. And that the answer to lovelessness is love. I've read bell hooks for thirty years, but these essays and the process of co-creating with you taught me what love in the face of lovelessness really feels like. The marrow of it. When you say, "I don't trust any antiracism work that doesn't embrace and see our humanity," I can feel the call for love. I get it so fully right now. It's like you're telling us that if you don't see the heart and the love and the humanity and the joy of the Black experience -- of Black humanity -- then the anti-racism work is bankrupt.

Tarana: Exactly. It's just like knowing something intellectually but not feeling it, and this is feeling work. It's heart work as much as it is head work. Those two things have to be in tandem. And I love that we have the ability to make this offering to Black folks who have felt stifled in this moment and overwhelmed and have not had space.

This is not a book to be rushed through. It is a book to breathe into, to weep with, to celebrate. I invite you to savor it, even if, like me, a white woman, you feel a bit like a peeping tom.