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504 reviews for:
You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience
Tarana Burke, Brené Brown
4.56 AVERAGE
504 reviews for:
You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience
Tarana Burke, Brené Brown
4.56 AVERAGE
This is a strong collection of vital essays; not one is weak. Some of the essays (like Jason Reynolds') made me cry, while others made me think about applying the lessons of vulnerability and shame resilience to my own life (I think folx of other races can do the same). I will purchase my own copy so that I can return to these essays again and again. I will also investigate the works by co-editor Brene Brown, who is quoted by a number of contributors and happens to be a white woman.
Some quotes:
Some quotes:
On the other side of healing is not a return to what has been but instead renewed purpose, deeper relationships, and dignity for the collective. - Prentis Hemphill
Embracing mystery leaves room for our own mysterious, emotional responses, and allows love to fill us up in ways that our certain faiths never could. - Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts
Shame resilience according to Brene Brown is the ability to practice authenticity when we experience shame, to move through the experience without sacrificing our values, to come out on the other side of the shame experience with more courage, compassion, and connection than we had going into it. - Deran Young
Dangerous is the woman who can give herself what she used to seek from others. Limitless is the woman who dares to name herself. The way I see it, shame cannot oppress what acceptance has already claimed for sovereignty. - Jessica J. Williams
I have one pressing thought regarding this book that I’ll keep to myself.
I’ll point out the good I found in this. Jason Reynolds, Mama Tanya & Luvvie Ajayi Jones touched me the most. It also made me smile to hear Tarana Burke’s child story.
I’ll point out the good I found in this. Jason Reynolds, Mama Tanya & Luvvie Ajayi Jones touched me the most. It also made me smile to hear Tarana Burke’s child story.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
emotional
inspiring
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Listening to this as an audiobook added extra depth to the collection of heartfelt and often heart wrenching essays. Hearing most of the writers sharing their vulnerability, their shame, their life, and their blackness using their own voices was powerful. I highly recommend this for everyone to read and listen to as this so clearly depicts the consistent problems in America of systemic racism, white supremacy, mental health disorders and more but it also offered some suggestions and insight into fixing these problems. America is broken but maybe not unfixable if we can acknowledge the past and current harm whites are still putting on black persons, recognizing black humanity and our own white privilege and making efforts to heal our own mental health and make corrective systemic changes maybe we can have a better future for everyone... I hope.
This was okay. Some of the essays were very interesting and I related to their stories. The editors were a bit heavy handed in their editing for some of them though, and suddenly between one paragraph and the next there was no transition yet a wild leap into something unrelated. I did find myself feeling bored with some of the essays and I would check to see how many more pages were left until the next essay to decide if I'll stick it out or skip to the next one. I pushed through to read this as part of a book club discussion I'll participate in, but had it not been for my sense of obligation for that I wouldn't have finished this book. I ended up listening to part of it on audio and the essays are read by their authors which I thought was pretty great.
Beautiful, brave, heartwrenching, and honest stories from black people about their experience with shame, vulnerability, and joy. My particular favorites were Jason Reynolds, Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts, Luvvie Ajayi Jones, and Laverne Cox.