I'm Still Here

A very quick little book that packs some big wallops. I have done a lot of learning about the work of anti-racism in the last few years, but never from this particular perspective (from a Black author within the community church). I definitely think the strongest parts are about Channing Brown's childhood, the lessons she takes from her parents and cousin about her own Blackness, and how her faith and work is affected by white people within her church and community spaces. I really appreciated the bluntness of her descriptions of walking through her day as an organizer, the microaggressions she experiences and what meaning she takes away from each of those interactions, and how those messages wear down her spirit. And of course, conversations within the church about white feelings/fragility, reparations, and whether or not it's realistic for the Black community to have hope for a better future.

(In glancing through reviews of this book, it seems there's still a lot of learning that we white people need to do in order to make hope a realistic outcome from these conversations.)

I think this is a great companion to similar anti-racism books, as Channing Brown includes a breadth of topics but doesn't particularly delve too deeply. So You Want to Talk About Race and White Fragility are good starter books for some of those topics, and White Awake was decent at looking at the evangelical church through a white lens (though note that the latter two books are written by white authors).

The audio was read by the author, and it was excellent. 3.5 stars.