You Are Your Best Thing ★★★★☆

You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★☆

You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience Edited by Tarana Burke and Brene Brown is a collection of essays about shame and vulnerability through the lens of the Black experience.

I read this as an audiobook read by a number of the authors and checked out from the library.

To start off, I think this book is geared more towards Black readers, so as a white reader I felt it was my place to be a witness of these stories with a learner mind-set. That being said, I really enjoyed this book. The intro was a conversation between the two editors about how they decided to embark on this project and the essays themselves were written by a combination of known and lesser-known Black writers, activists, celebrities, etc. including Laverne Cox, Keah Brown, and Jason Reynolds. The stories were raw and honest and really got at how shame and vulnerability have so many more layers when viewed thru the Black experience. The most apt description of shame to me was that shame is like a spaghetti-stained Tupperware. Woof.

I have read nearly all of Berne’s Brown’s work, but Tarana Burke was new to me - she is the founder of the #metoo movement and has a new memoir that I plan on checking out.

If you liked You Are Your Best Thing, I also recommend My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem, Four Hundred Souls Edited by Ibram X Kendi, Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley Ford, and Disability Visibility Edited by Alice Wong.

Happy reading,

Ms.Bjork