Gather Me
A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A “dramatic [and] ingeniously crafted” (Los Angeles Times) memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl.
“A beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an expansive and ever-growing love for words and for language.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”—Toni Morrison, Beloved
For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.
Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, she found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.
Gather Me is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this endearing debut ode to literary figures ranging from bell hooks to the Berenstain Bears, Edim, founder of the Well Read Black Girl network, eloquently explores the transformative power of literature in her life. Encouraged by her Nigerian immigrant mother to read voraciously, Edim spent her Virginia childhood making up stories with her younger brother. When her parents' marriage faltered and her father returned to Nigeria in the early 1990s, Edim burrowed even deeper into the comforts of her bookshelf, finding particular solace in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. As she catalogs her struggles through high school, her studies at Howard University, and caring for her mother as she battled with debilitating depression, Edim weaves in rapturous tributes to James Baldwin and Alice Walker (The Color Purple's complicated family dynamics held special resonance), as well as Jamaica Kincaid and Sonia Sanchez ("If I could write like Sonia Sanchez... what words would I choose for my father?"). In the process, Edim beautifully illuminates how discovering or revisiting formative texts can confer all the warmth and wisdom of chatting with a clutch of aunties. This moving autobiography—complete with a reading list—will make a deep impression on book lovers.
Customer Reviews
It Gathered Me
In this book, Edim delivers a powerful exploration of literature's transformative power, weaving together personal stories and incisive literary insights to craft a memoir that celebrates the books that have shaped her, while inviting readers to contemplate their own relationships with literature.
I wholeheartedly recommend “Gather Me” to book enthusiasts who recognize the transformative impact of literature. Edim's memoir serves as a poignant tribute to the authors and stories that have inspired her, offering profound reflections on the capacity of literature to influence our lives. Whether a longstanding devotee of the Well-Read Black Girl book club or newly introduced to Edim's work, is a universally relatable memoir.