'SHE MADE A WAY - PART TWO"

 “SHE MADE A WAY – PART TWO

I’m waiting to receive my order of my newest book “She Made A Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.”  It is part memoir, part story of my mother’s courage and tenacity, part study of our captivity to the destructive powers, and part reflection on seeking liberation from those powers.  For a long time, I have wanted to write the story of my single mother and me, seeking to live out of love in a world of racism, sexism, and materialism.  I’ve also wanted to work through the story of my mother raising me as a single, working mom in a patriarchal society, seeking to keep me from harm, while offering me some possible paths to liberation.

Here is what Dr. Chris Boesel wrote in his endorsement of “She Made A Way”:  

“This startlingly honest memoir is essential reading for white folk in the USA, and for anyone struggling to understand the intractable power of racism and white supremacy in our personal and social lives.  At the heart of this story is the mystery of how the destructive forces of racism – and sexism and homophobia – can reign in the hearts and lives that are also full of genuine, life-giving familial love and loyalty.  The book’s stark promise: transformative change is possible, but only as a lifelong journey accompanied by heartbreaking division and conflict.  Nibs Stroupe’s gospel is one of truly redemptive power – that also divides like a sword.”  

So, this book is written in honor of my mother, Mary Armour Stroupe, but also as an answer to a question with which I have long wrestled in my adult life:  How did I – and how do any of us – get caught in the web of racism and sexism and materialism?  How do we get so captured by demonic powers like this?  It is a captivity so deep that it changes the way that we perceive ourselves and perceive the world around us.  It is a captivity that is so subtle that it takes our hearts long before we know anything about it.  We are taken so deeply into such a captivity because it is given to us by those we love and who we love.  That is the stark and difficult answer, and this is why so many people who are classified as “white” are in such deep denial about our captivity.  To acknowledge our captivity would be to put ourselves in conflict with those we love, and it is a great price to pay.

This book does not leave us in despair, however.  It offers us hope for beginning to find some liberation from our captivity.  While my mother helped to bind me into this captivity, she also offered me ways to find a different path.  Her love, her compassion, her tenacity, her decency, her sense of fairness – all these factored into the tentative steps that I began to take to find some liberation from my captivity, steps that brought me into tension with her.  

So, go get the book!  You can find it at bookshop.org (the link is https://bookshop.org/p/books/she-made-a-way-mother-and-me-in-a-deep-south-world-nibs-stroupe/21530365?ean=9798385208548), your local bookstore, Amazon, or me.  I’ll be glad to get your comments on it.  And, of course, I’ll be glad to come to any of your groups to do a book talk/signing.  Thanks to our daughter Susan, I now have an author page on Facebook, and here’s the link for that: https://www.facebook.com/nibsstroupeauthor/