ShoeLuvva

A most excellent and timely read

Revisado: 07-02-24

This is a book that comes right on time from a living human rights activist and emphatic lover of ALL of our Black people all over the African diaspora. Tesfamariam holds love accountable on levels that we dare not speak of in the public sphere. She demands more of each of us—that we regulate and interrogate systems in our own lives and in this country and not conflate our excellence, worth, and success with capitalistic, glorified, or popular measures of flaunt-worthy social media braggadocio. Imagine Freedom is a clarion call to closely examine what we have bought into as the norm and shows how disparate this trade-off is from our ancestors’ “wildest dreams.”

Tesfamariam’s writing is divinely guided by compelling truths, comprehensive research, and deep urgency. She is rooting for our personal and collective transformation. Ultimately, her work is a love letter and call to action to courageously examine what impedes our liberation and create new models of self-worth and success with an agape love and radical inclusion for our people by our people.

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A most necessary and transformative read.

Revisado: 07-11-23

I devoured this. Thank God for Audibles. This was the book I didn’t know I needed to read. I had zero spoilers and zero expectations other than for an entertaining read. I got so much more than that. I am now more enlightened, empathetic, and whole.

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A Most Exquisite Audible for A Timeless Read

Revisado: 04-16-23

I’ve read this book numerous times. Today marked the second time that I’ve listened to it in over ten years, and Ruby Dee’s rendering never fails. Her ability to possess each character just so made for a nonstop and exhilarating ride through Eatonville, Palm Beach, and The Glades. This is a timeless story of love and the ways of folk, so buckle up, buttercup, and keep on listening as Hurston looks at the very underbelly of us in a given space and time and simply lays it bare for us to examine, question, discover, delight and retreat as needed.

In the end, loving and living ain’t hardly as easy as black and white or right and wrong but very much complex, gray, and it-depends. This listening pleasure was so good that I just kept on cleaning the house until the book’s end. My kitchen, bedroom, and mudroom are now spotless. Thee Ruby Dee did it! 🙏🏽

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All You Have Is Now. Act with Urgency

Revisado: 09-26-22

A timely and relevant listen in an age where folks need inspiration and the courage to DO.

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“Step In” to your rebel

Revisado: 06-24-21

I strongly recommend this book, without reservation, to women who need that push into the divine women that God has called them to be, women who are still seeking and/or waiting for permission to commit to that BIG vision they’ve been seeing for some time now, women longing to move from the stage of knowing their gifts to executing their vision where they can have maximum impact and influence. I double dare you to NOT embrace your rebel and bigger belief after listening to this book. Marshawn reads this book with the utmost of grace and defiance. I love to see this tour de force at the establishment or any other norms that dare to confine women to the sidelines or to playing it small. Knowing your gifts and purpose is but one stage of the purpose path; daring to believe in ourselves and in the bigger vision that God has given us, then stepping into it, is the ultimate hallmark of a life well-lived.

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Even better the second time ...

Revisado: 11-26-20

I read a physical copy of this book when it was first released. (See original review on Goodreads.) Once I learned that an audio version was available, read by the author, I committed to listening to it during my walks. I cried and laughed along the way. I also breathed many a deep sigh.

Heavy is an unfolding of irreconcilables. A rendering of a love letter, really. A work of brilliant courage, elegant prose, and an adamant refusal to comply with English conventions of storytelling. There is no standard fare here. A letter from a son to his mother—a letter to us who dare claim to love Black folks. A charge to open ourselves completely and vulnerably—bare— in order to find, restore, liberate, love, remember, and heal our whole entire selves. A necessary telling of a rather difficult story. A story of how interwoven our identity is—in all its multiplicity—in the tapestry of our being American. What does it mean to be an American? What baggage have we inherited, especially as Black folks, and how do we untether ourselves from “tradition” in order to love each other completely without harming each other and love ourselves completely without self-harm, self-sabotage, or self-loathing? How do we love without violence to the Black body when we love so deeply that we will do anything to protect those we love, no matter how violent? How can we be our most authentic selves separate from a white gaze and white respectability and conformity? How can we proportionally and responsibly teach every student though some students are disproportionately advantaged, empowered, and privileged without bias? How do we then not misuse our own power —be it advantageous access or privilege of any kind to patriarchy or gender privilege—and not hurt the ones we claim to love? How do we disrupt continuing unhealthy generational cycles and traditions and begin anew? How do we prune the lessons we’ve learned even when some of the soil was bad or rocky? What good still remains, and is it enough to keep us from not losing our mind and ourselves? There are so many difficult questions posed with no easy answers. “A good question always trumps an average answer,” says the author’s mother. Her wisdom rings true in spite of their shared painful past.

We are complex beings with hearts at the core that need tending and loving and wholeness and truth and acceptance and protection; meeting these needs without provocation of violence, degradation, or harm is our ultimate challenge. Otherwise, we will remain heavy and burdened and never really ever get free, and Lord knows that this is too much of a burden to bear. Our wholeness depends on it. We will run from ourselves, to the point that we will try to even “disappear,” as Kiese once tried. We can never accomplish this. Lord knows we need to survive because there is still so much work to do for us and by us—the healing, the restoration, the liberation, the imagination, the very work of saving ourselves and freeing ourselves.

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