Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me

by Glory Edim Narrated by Not Yet Available

Overview

An inspiring 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.

“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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

With candor and tenderness, Glory Edim gathers us as if welcoming us to her porch, or stoop, or kitchen table and in this sacred space she whispers her poignant testimony revealing to us her scars as proof that words—written and spoken—enlighten, restore, heal. This ode to Black scribes is a resting place, a balm.”—Renée Watson, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Glory Edim’s Gather Me is a moving memoir and a powerful testament to Black literature’s capacity to heal, guide, and help us become the best women, mothers, lovers, and daughters we can be and offer ourselves grace in the journey of becoming. Readers will benefit from Glory’s clear-eyed witness to the struggles and triumphs of her life and her rendering of the wreckage and refuge that family and love provide.”—Naomi Jackson, author of The Star Side of Bird Hill

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178447284
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/29/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged