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Take, for instance, home.
It’s a complicated word, to be sure. It means going back to
where people love you, where your roots lie, even if your
parents spent their lives leaving it. It might be the first
place you experienced bullying. Maybe you wonder where
“home” is – or you may already be there but you’re “just not
sure how long [you’ll] stay.”
On racism: what would you say if, after learning about Rosa
Parks, your child asks which water fountain he would’ve had
to choose, had he lived then? Or: what do you do when your
school pays homage to the historical figure who stole your
ancestors’ lands? Also: if you endured racism as a child,
will there ever be a time when you’ve “stopped being eight
years old”?
And then there’s the matter of identity.
What was it like to be raised in an all-white neighborhood,
educated in an almost-all-white school, with mostly-white
friends? Many of the authors know – and they honor the
elders who taught them through example what it was like to
be a woman of color. Still, many write about being the
“only”: the only Black English teacher, the only Asian
student, the only 40-something Latina in the
mom-group…
Sometimes, you may “feel like part of no people and every
people.” Your hair is curly. Your political beliefs are
loud. The next generation is yours to raise, if you choose,
and you’ve got things to tell them. You are beautiful, and
you know that “Some scar tissue knits so tight that it
shores you up like a bone.”
There’s something absolutely compelling about the stories in
All the Women in My Family Sing. They’re like an
addiction.
Read one, and your eyes fly open. Turn to the middle and
your heart sinks. Taste one at random and find a kindred
spirit, then disagree with another that just doesn’t touch
you right. That’s the appeal of this book: each of the
essays in here – written by everyday women as well as those
with fame – are short enough to dip into quick, you can
easily skip around, and they’ll all make you think and think
and think.
Yes, All the Women in My Family Sing is for women.
It’s more feminist than not. And yes, men can enjoy it, too,
because reading it is like falling into a web of nourishing
voices. This is a book to have, no matter who you are. |
