"SHE MADE A WAY"

 “SHE MADE A WAY”

The advance copy of the book has arrived – yay!  “She Made A Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World” is published by Wipf and Stock (they did my book of sermons “Deeper Waters” in 2017), and it should be available now at their website (orders@wipfandstock.com), bookshop.org, Amazon, Thriftbooks , or from me.  Let me know if you want to get one from me.  And, of course, I’ll be glad to do a book-signing/talk with any group of which you are a member.  Let me know, and we’ll line something up.

The liner notes from Wipf and Stock have this to say:

“She Made a Way is a memoir of survival and growth under the twin threats of white supremacy and male dominance. It is an intimate story of perseverance and coming of age: how a single, white working mother and her only son made their way in the patriarchal and racist world of postwar Helena, Arkansas, a Mississippi river town. It is also a story of transformation: a lifetime of journeying together out of captivity to white supremacy and toward the deeper truth of compassion and liberation. In an era saturated with forces of racism and sexism, we find here a mother and son struggling in their relationship to each other and to America, maintaining love while living toward a new vision of themselves and the world.”

My friend John Blake (if you haven’t read his memoir “More Than I Imagined” about his relationship to his mother, please do so!) wrote the Foreword to “She Made a Way.”  Here’s part of that Foreword:

“I know this story so well because I was one of those journalists who

stopped by Oakhurst to write about Nibs and the church. But unlike the

other journalists, I stayed and joined Oakhurst. And what I discovered

was that the story behind Nibs’ conversion on race was no racial kum-

baya story. It was much richer, confounding, and ultimately more inspir-

ing than any brief news report could capture. And today I would make

another argument: At a time when the United States is more divided than

arguably anytime since the Civil War, Nibs’ story is more urgent than

ever.

Nibs is one of the most insightful and thought-provoking com-

mentators on race and religion in contemporary America. His range of

experience is virtually unmatched by any of the leaders that the media

traditionally go to for commentary on race and faith. He has a visceral

understanding of how racism warps the souls of White America, and

the psychological games many play to deny their complicity because he’s

played those games himself. As Nibs once told me, he grew up in the

“belly of the beast”—the segregated world of Helena, Arkansas where

White supremacy was widely considered to be normal and ordained by

God. ‘I know this stuff; it’s in my veins,’ he once told me.”

I had wanted for so long to write this book, mainly to express my gratitude to my mother for raising me as a single, working mom in the midst of a patriarchal and racist time.  Yet, in doing so, I discovered a key nugget in my work on combatting racism – most of us who are captured by its power learned it not from mean and nasty folks, but from good folks, people like my mother who loved me, and whom I loved.  I learned it from my church and my school system.  To use St. Paul’s provocative metaphor from Ephesians 2, we breathed it in, as part of the power of the prince of the air.  Because we learned racism through loving, it makes it so much harder to engage and to find liberation, because we risk not only our loving relationships, but we also risk changing our view of ourselves, our history, and our way of living.  

This book “She Made A Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World” is the story of one constellation of that journey of loving, of captivity, of seeking liberation in complex and essential work.  It is multiplied many times in America, and I urge you to get a copy of this book, read it and let’s talk!