What I’m Reading These Days…
I devoured the Cicely Tyson autobiography, Just As I Am, the same week it arrived in the mail. What a life! The takeaways were numerous, but what I most appreciated about her story is her integrity. She decided early on in her career not to take on roles that she felt would not represent Black women in all our multifaceted glory. And when you survey the landscape of roles she portrayed, you know that she stayed true to herself.
Challenging the status quo is never easy for Black women — I can only imagine the amount of intestinal fortitude she had to build up in order to create art on her own terms. And she did it so brilliantly. If you want to be inspired and uplifted, I highly recommend adding this to your reading list.
Along the same lines of integrity and fortitude rests my latest read, The Purpose of Power by Alicia Garza, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. The book is a blueprint for how to organize successfully without losing one’s way. Garza brings clarity to the idea of what constitutes a movement — and what doesn’t. She also shares her wisdom, collected over a lifetime of grassroots activism. What I most admire about her is how centered and self-assured she is as she tells her story — it’s one thing to be a visionary, but it’s quite another to persuade others to buy into that vision. She’s perfected both.
During Women’s History Month, I will have the unique privilege of sitting down with Garza as part of an ongoing series at Medium, called Medium in Conversation. Stay tuned here for more information on how you can join us virtually on March 11, 2021, at 4:15 p.m. ET, 1:15 p.m PT. Trust me, you won’t want to miss this!
