Bigger Than Bravery
Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic
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Description
Best Books of 2022, Library Journal
An anthology of Black resilience and reclamation, with contributions by Pearl Cleage, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Tayari Jones, Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Deesha Philyaw, Khadijah Queen, Jason Reynolds, Alice Walker, and moreBorn of a desire to bring together the voices of those most harshly affected by the intersecting pandemics of Covid-19 and systemic racism, Bigger Than Bravery explores comfort and compromise, challenge and resilience, throughout the Great Pause that became the Great Call. Award-winning author and scholar of the Black archive Valerie Boyd curates this anthology of original essays and poems, alongside some of the most influential nonfiction published on the subject, inviting readers into a conversation of restorative joy and enduring wisdom. Bigger Than Bravery captures what Boyd calls the "first draft of history," with poems serving as deep breaths between narrative essays to form a loose chronology of this unprecedented time. Karen Good Marable cranks "Whip My Hair" from the car windows during quarantine joyrides with her daughter. Deesha Philyaw ponders loneliness as she sorts Zoom meetings into those that require a bra and those that don't. Writing in the moment though not of it, Pearl Cleage reflects on what has and hasn't changed since the AIDS epidemic. Jason Reynolds harnesses heat and flavor to carry on his father's legacy.Sorrow and outrage have their say, but the stories in these pages are bright with family, music, food, and home, teaching us how to nourish ourselves and our communities. Looking ahead as much as it looks back, Bigger Than Bravery offers a window into a hopeful, complex present, establishing an essential record of how Black people in America insist on joy as an act of resistance.
Big Indie Book of Fall, Publishers Weekly
2023 Georgia Author of the Year Award Winner for specialty book
Foreword INDIES silver winner for anthology
"Valerie Boyd's Bigger Than Bravery isn't just an anthology; it is a survival guide."
--Courtney B. Vance, Tony- and Emmy-winning actor
An anthology of Black resilience and reclamation, with contributions by Pearl Cleage, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Tayari Jones, Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Deesha Philyaw, Khadijah Queen, Jason Reynolds, Alice Walker, and moreBorn of a desire to bring together the voices of those most harshly affected by the intersecting pandemics of Covid-19 and systemic racism, Bigger Than Bravery explores comfort and compromise, challenge and resilience, throughout the Great Pause that became the Great Call. Award-winning author and scholar of the Black archive Valerie Boyd curates this anthology of original essays and poems, alongside some of the most influential nonfiction published on the subject, inviting readers into a conversation of restorative joy and enduring wisdom. Bigger Than Bravery captures what Boyd calls the "first draft of history," with poems serving as deep breaths between narrative essays to form a loose chronology of this unprecedented time. Karen Good Marable cranks "Whip My Hair" from the car windows during quarantine joyrides with her daughter. Deesha Philyaw ponders loneliness as she sorts Zoom meetings into those that require a bra and those that don't. Writing in the moment though not of it, Pearl Cleage reflects on what has and hasn't changed since the AIDS epidemic. Jason Reynolds harnesses heat and flavor to carry on his father's legacy.Sorrow and outrage have their say, but the stories in these pages are bright with family, music, food, and home, teaching us how to nourish ourselves and our communities. Looking ahead as much as it looks back, Bigger Than Bravery offers a window into a hopeful, complex present, establishing an essential record of how Black people in America insist on joy as an act of resistance.
Product Details
| Publisher | Lookout Books |
| Publish Date | November 15, 2022 |
| Pages | 256 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781940596471 |
| Dimensions | 8.4 X 5.5 X 1.0 inches | 0.7 pounds |
About the Author
Valerie Boyd was the author of the critically acclaimed Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston and the editor of Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker. She was the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Georgia, where she founded and directed the Low-Residency MFA in Narrative Nonfiction. Formerly arts editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and senior consulting editor at the Bitter Southerner, Boyd also wrote for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Bon Appetit, Essence, and the Oxford American, among other places.
Alice Walker is the acclaimed author of novels, stories, essays, and poetry. In 1983, she became the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Color Purple, which also won the National Book Award. Among her other books are The Temple of My Familiar, Meridian, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, edited by Valerie Boyd.
Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He is the author of the novel Long Division, the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and the New York Times best-selling Heavy: An American Memoir.
Deesha Philyaw's debut story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020 / 2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.
Jason Reynolds is an award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of many books, including Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, a collaboration with Ibram X. Kendi; Long Way Down; Look Both Ways; and the Track series.
Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, winner of the 2019 Bograd-Weld Biography Prize from the Pen America Foundation. She is also the author of Breathe: A Letter to My Sons; Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation; and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Perry, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago, lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons.
Emily Bernard is the author of Black Is the Body, winner of the Los Angeles Times-Christopher Isherwood Prize for Auto-biographical Prose. She is a 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont.
Destiny O. Birdsong is the author of the poetry collection Negotiations, which was published by Tin House Books in 2020 and longlisted for the 2021 PEN / Voelcker Award, and the triptych novel Nobody's Magic, which was published by Grand Central in 2022.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is a two-time Emmy nominee, as well as a Golden Globe, Critics Choice, BAFTA, and Oscar nominee. Her essays appear in TIME and EBONY, and on CNN. She is the coauthor, with her sister, of the forthcoming graphic novel Neshoba, published by Amistad / HarperCollins. She lives proudly somewhere in backwoods Wi-Fi Never Works, Mississippi.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer Black feminist love evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all life. Alexis is also the author of several books, most recently Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals and Dub: Finding Ceremony. She was a 2020-2021 National Humanities Center Fellow and is a current National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. Her biography The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde is forthcoming. She is cofounder of Mobile Homecoming Trust in Durham, North Carolina.
Karen Good Marable is an Atlanta-based writer whose byline has been featured in books and magazines including the New Yorker, the Bitter Southerner, and ESSENCE. She is particularly proud of the essay in this anthology. In late July 2020, while originally penning "Joyride" for the Oxford American, her family contracted Covid. Through phlegm, short breath, no taste, and worry, still she wrote---and is grateful to tell the tale.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the author of five books of poetry, including The Gospel of Barbecue and The Age of Phillis, and one novel, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois. A native southerner, Jeffers now lives on the prairie and teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.
Khadijah Queen, PhD, is the author of six books, most recently Anodyne, published by Tin House Books in 2020 and I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On, published by YesYes Books in 2017. She is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech.
Reviews
"A truly remarkable collection of voices whose cumulative impact will be felt many years from now . . . This is a collection that deserves to be studied in classrooms across the country."
--Judges' Citation, 2023 Georgia Author of the Year Awards "Eloquent and riveting, Boyd's collection delivers not only, as she promises in her introduction, 'a long exhalation, a silent prayer, a solace and a comfort' but also, in the words of Imani Perry, a celebration of Blackness as 'an immense and defiant joy.' This one's not to be missed."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review, Big Indie Book of Fall "A map of ancestral knowledge, revelatory insight, and feelings laid bare . . . These pages share poems of hope, narratives of loss, anger, fear, loneliness, togetherness, death, and most potently, life, to paint a portrait . . . resonant to all."
--Library Journal, Editors' Pick"A brilliant compilation of Black writers' reflections on the intersection of the Covid-19 pandemic and systemic racism . . . Boyd carefully curated works from some of the most influential Black authors."
--The Root, Best Black Non Fiction of 2022"Fierce and moving . . . this book adds to [Boyd's] impressive legacy. Kiese Laymon, Alice Walker, and Jason Reynolds--as well as a host of emerging writers--write with grace and power. . . . There is pain in these pieces, but also beauty and strength."
--Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Each piece is in conversation with every other, and while centering Black experiences, they are universal messages to the attuned ear. . . . Bigger Than Bravery reminds the reader, so many of us who are ready to move on from the pandemic, that this Great Pause and this Great Call was and is a profound and prophetic time. . . . There are deep lessons and golden blessings in the time of pandemic."
--K Anoa Monsho, The Guardian
"With this work, Boyd, Pearl Cleage, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Tayari Jones, Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Deesha Philyaw, Khadijah Queen, Alice Walker, and more have made significant contributions to history."
--Library Journal, Best Books of 2022
"The contributions to Bigger Than Bravery . . . encourage readers to consider how to make good use of the moments we have--to persist past hardship, find joy in adversity, be resilient, survive, live on (or be remembered)."
--Michael Kleber-Diggs, Minneapolis Star Tribune"Spanning emotions from anger and frustration to joy and levity, Bigger Than Bravery is a multi-faceted look at the Black experience during the coronavirus pandemic. It tackles thorny issues and raises difficult questions, but ultimately it offers a ray of hope."
--Suzanne Van Atten, Atlanta Journal-Constitution"Crafted as an act of resistance to despair during the COVID-19 pandemic--which has disproportionately affected African Americans--Bigger Than Bravery gathers poetry and prose from thirty-one Black writers whose words offer 'comfort as we reach toward the promise of brighter days ahead.' "
--Poets & Writers"A brilliant chronicle of the Black experience in the age of Covid-19. As this generation's leading writers struggle to live with both the virus and rising social injustice, their grief over lost loved ones, personal fears, and the pervading loneliness of isolation eventually lead them on the path to self-rediscovery. Valerie Boyd's Bigger Than Bravery isn't just an anthology; it is a survival guide. As the country slowly finds itself returning to normal life, the authors' reflections on Black resilience and reclamation not only have the power to heal but provide hope and a road map for a brighter, more inclusive future."
--Courtney B. Vance, Tony- and Emmy-winning actor"Heart-wrenching, funny, and outrageously human, these pieces help us reflect on a dark period of a global pandemic and the shifting meanings of normalcy."
--Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of the New York Times Best Seller Patsy"In this anthology, Black writers explore the courage, the fear, and all the mottled emotions in between that ruled us during the most uncertain days of the pandemic. Their powerful essays and poems take the breath away, then help us to breathe again."
--Jacqueline Woodson, author of the New York Times Best Sellers Brown Girl Dreaming and Red at the Bone"After a year in which the longstanding inequities faced by Black people and communities were laid starkly bare, these pieces offer resistance and political commentary, yes. But they also--in prose and poetry that is thought-provoking, moving, and wise--delve into deeply personal stories of longing and solitude, the pleasures of food and friendship, family histories, and the meaning of home. 'Resilience' is an overused and sometimes overvalued concept, and yet that's exactly what kept coming to mind as I read this fine collection: the writers' steadfast insistence not just on surviving, but thriving, on wresting joy from a time of crisis and loss."
--Nina Revoyr, author of Wingshooters and Southland"Bigger Than Bravery demonstrates the power of words to help heal what ails us. The timely collection provides the balm of comfort and joy we all need to overcome this peril, however long it takes."
--Charlayne Hunter-Gault, American civil rights activist, journalist, and foreign correspondent
--Judges' Citation, 2023 Georgia Author of the Year Awards "Eloquent and riveting, Boyd's collection delivers not only, as she promises in her introduction, 'a long exhalation, a silent prayer, a solace and a comfort' but also, in the words of Imani Perry, a celebration of Blackness as 'an immense and defiant joy.' This one's not to be missed."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review, Big Indie Book of Fall "A map of ancestral knowledge, revelatory insight, and feelings laid bare . . . These pages share poems of hope, narratives of loss, anger, fear, loneliness, togetherness, death, and most potently, life, to paint a portrait . . . resonant to all."
--Library Journal, Editors' Pick"A brilliant compilation of Black writers' reflections on the intersection of the Covid-19 pandemic and systemic racism . . . Boyd carefully curated works from some of the most influential Black authors."
--The Root, Best Black Non Fiction of 2022"Fierce and moving . . . this book adds to [Boyd's] impressive legacy. Kiese Laymon, Alice Walker, and Jason Reynolds--as well as a host of emerging writers--write with grace and power. . . . There is pain in these pieces, but also beauty and strength."
--Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Each piece is in conversation with every other, and while centering Black experiences, they are universal messages to the attuned ear. . . . Bigger Than Bravery reminds the reader, so many of us who are ready to move on from the pandemic, that this Great Pause and this Great Call was and is a profound and prophetic time. . . . There are deep lessons and golden blessings in the time of pandemic."
--K Anoa Monsho, The Guardian
"With this work, Boyd, Pearl Cleage, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Tayari Jones, Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Deesha Philyaw, Khadijah Queen, Alice Walker, and more have made significant contributions to history."
--Library Journal, Best Books of 2022
"The contributions to Bigger Than Bravery . . . encourage readers to consider how to make good use of the moments we have--to persist past hardship, find joy in adversity, be resilient, survive, live on (or be remembered)."
--Michael Kleber-Diggs, Minneapolis Star Tribune"Spanning emotions from anger and frustration to joy and levity, Bigger Than Bravery is a multi-faceted look at the Black experience during the coronavirus pandemic. It tackles thorny issues and raises difficult questions, but ultimately it offers a ray of hope."
--Suzanne Van Atten, Atlanta Journal-Constitution"Crafted as an act of resistance to despair during the COVID-19 pandemic--which has disproportionately affected African Americans--Bigger Than Bravery gathers poetry and prose from thirty-one Black writers whose words offer 'comfort as we reach toward the promise of brighter days ahead.' "
--Poets & Writers"A brilliant chronicle of the Black experience in the age of Covid-19. As this generation's leading writers struggle to live with both the virus and rising social injustice, their grief over lost loved ones, personal fears, and the pervading loneliness of isolation eventually lead them on the path to self-rediscovery. Valerie Boyd's Bigger Than Bravery isn't just an anthology; it is a survival guide. As the country slowly finds itself returning to normal life, the authors' reflections on Black resilience and reclamation not only have the power to heal but provide hope and a road map for a brighter, more inclusive future."
--Courtney B. Vance, Tony- and Emmy-winning actor"Heart-wrenching, funny, and outrageously human, these pieces help us reflect on a dark period of a global pandemic and the shifting meanings of normalcy."
--Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of the New York Times Best Seller Patsy"In this anthology, Black writers explore the courage, the fear, and all the mottled emotions in between that ruled us during the most uncertain days of the pandemic. Their powerful essays and poems take the breath away, then help us to breathe again."
--Jacqueline Woodson, author of the New York Times Best Sellers Brown Girl Dreaming and Red at the Bone"After a year in which the longstanding inequities faced by Black people and communities were laid starkly bare, these pieces offer resistance and political commentary, yes. But they also--in prose and poetry that is thought-provoking, moving, and wise--delve into deeply personal stories of longing and solitude, the pleasures of food and friendship, family histories, and the meaning of home. 'Resilience' is an overused and sometimes overvalued concept, and yet that's exactly what kept coming to mind as I read this fine collection: the writers' steadfast insistence not just on surviving, but thriving, on wresting joy from a time of crisis and loss."
--Nina Revoyr, author of Wingshooters and Southland"Bigger Than Bravery demonstrates the power of words to help heal what ails us. The timely collection provides the balm of comfort and joy we all need to overcome this peril, however long it takes."
--Charlayne Hunter-Gault, American civil rights activist, journalist, and foreign correspondent
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