For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts
A Love Letter to Women of Color
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4.3 • 49 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the founder of Latina Rebels, a rallying cry for women of color that gives them the keys for their own liberation
“Mojica Rodríguez’s electrifying debut channels mesmeric prose to heal the wounds of white supremacy.” —Los Angeles Times
For generations, Brown girls have had to push against powerful forces of sexism, racism, and classism, often feeling alone in the struggle. By founding Latina Rebels, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez has created a community to help women fight together. In For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, she offers wisdom and a liberating path forward for all women of color. She crafts powerful ways to address the challenges Brown girls face, from imposter syndrome to colorism. She empowers women to decolonize their worldview, and defy “universal” white narratives, by telling their own stories. Her book guides women of color toward a sense of pride and sisterhood and offers essential tools to energize a movement.
May it spark a fire within you.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In her searing memoir, Latina Rebels founder Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez offers hope and inspiration to girls like her. She gets deeply personal about how she learned to break free of Eurocentric standards of beauty and success, recounting heartfelt stories from her family history and childhood, first in Nicaragua and later as an immigrant living in Florida, where she attended a conservative, patriarchal church. Rodríguez's talent for storytelling shines through, especially when she’s celebrating the beauty and resilience of her community and quoting groundbreaking authors and thinkers like bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw. This is a loving tribute to brown girls, empowering them to own their spaces and work together for a better future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Latinx activist Rodríguez debuts with an impassioned and accessible guide to dismantling the "systemic oppressions" that hold back women of color. Aiming to redistribute knowledge she gained during her graduate studies to young women who may not have access to higher education, Rodríguez interweaves her life story with primers on such concepts as colonialism, the myth of meritocracy, the male gaze, and intersectionality. Born in Nicaragua and raised in Miami, Rodríguez was encouraged at age 13 by her fundamentalist Christian parents to pray for a "God-fearing" husband. But after scoring well on the SATs and realizing that her poor grades did not reflect her academic potential, Rodríguez set her sights on college, and eventually obtained a Master's in Divinity from Vanderbilt University. She draws on incidents from her early life and academic career to discuss how "voluntourism," even if it's "dressed in the semblance of goodness," obscures how the "current state of so-called developed countries is the result of greed and exploitation from developed countries"; how women of color are socialized to believe that success comes from luck ("imposter syndrome"); and how brown and Black women internalize "colorism." Marked by its candidness and earnest commitment to the power of self-belief, this is an inspiring and well-informed call to action.
Customer Reviews
Amazing!
The book made me feel seen and heard. This book helped me remember not to hide who I am and where my family comes from.