I picked up this non-fiction book from the "new books" on our town library shelves. It's a memoir and is very sobering and eye opening for those of us with white skin.
STORY SUMMARY
Goldie Taylor is being raised by a single mom because her daddy died...he was murdered. Goldie has one biological brother, Donnie.
When Goldie was 11 years old, she was out bike riding on the brand new bike she had received for her birthday when she is raped by a young man...a teenager..... from her neighborhood in East St Louis.
Her mother cannot cope with Goldie so she sends her to live with her Aunt Gerald and Uncle Ross. Aunt Gerald will take in anybody....there are always children running around and various adults who need help. Conditions and rules are harsh at Aunt Gerald's. Goldie has no bed, just sheets and blankets on the living room floor, same as some of her cousins. She also doesn't have any personal belongings other than the library books she borrows to read. One night, her first cousin sexually abuses her and this continues for a few more times. Until Goldie gets the courage to fight back in the only way she knows how: the power of her words.
Goldie is extremely smart and is in the top 98th percentile on the Iowa tests she takes in grade school. And......
Goldie discovers a secret. She finds kinship among black writers such as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. She finds hope from her English teacher who is very nurturing to Goldie. This teacher helps her find her voice. And Goldie realizes, as a young teen, that books have the power to save her life.
MY THOUGHTS
This is a powerful look at life in urban, poverty-stricken St Louis, MO in the Black community.
It's about her "coming of age" and her persistence in surviving and loving.
She writes a beautiful memoir that is at once sobering, funny in places, sad, joyful, touching, and triumphant. This memoir will stick with my soul for a quite a while.
I loved her description of all those family members. She went through physical, emotional, and at times, sexual abuse. She survived. The power of books/literature and learning what she was gifted in, really shines through.
I loved all of the spiritual insights she gained from her gospel loving, church going family.
Today, Goldie is a human rights activist, a journalist and she's a senior vice president and chief communications and marketing officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute! I'm so impressed with the person she has become. She lives in Boston and I would so love to meet this woman some day.
There were so many good quotes to come out of this memoir. Here are a few of my favorites:
"Here in our wounded and struggling city, BLack was beautiful, even if it sometimes needed to be shined and re-stitched like an old pair of shoes." (pg 235, The Love You Save by Goldie Taylor c. 2023
"...and never let where you are become who you are." (pg 253)
"Grief", as Joan Didion wrote so eloquently in The Year of Magical Thinking, "turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it." (pg 267)
"If you look at a thing long enough, good, bad, or otherwise, you can see God in it." (pg 275)
"I sometimes wonder what I might have been, but for the puss and scarring of sexual violence and how it formed and defined and confined me. But, if suffering breeds perseverance and defines character, given the choice, I might have traded endurance for a heart that beats evenly. Mostly, though, I want to love better." (pg 277)
This book will stick with you. As a white Christ following person looking at this very personal story of a young black woman, it really showed me that we have so much more to do in how we love.
Sadly, this book had several editing errors. Many articles (to, the, a) were left out where they should have appeared, otherwise this would have been a perfect 10 in my opinion.
In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to mature content).
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 9.
1 comment:
We used to live near East St. Louis in the "white suburb" near Scott Air Force Base. Our area was totally safe, but as a white person, I was warned by African Americans NOT to venture into East St. Louis ever - it was not safe. I actually ended up driving through there by mistake one day and East St. Louis looked like a war zone - no joke. It was terrible. Being the West, I never realized the stark racial divisions and animosity in places like East St. Louis. Living there was eye-opening for sure. The book sounds very interesting. I will have to see if I can find it. Thanks for the review!
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