Austin Channing BrownReseñas

I used this for the "an educational read" part of my 2021 reading challenge. I really enjoyed it, it was very well written and enlightening.

I went into this totally blind with no context what it was about. It kind of went all over the place, but I think she’s a good writer. I’m not Christian and never have been, so the Christian themes in the latter half went over my head.

Vulnerable and honest, Brown's memoir offers an intimate look at what it's like to be a Black woman in institutions and organizations that default to people who are white while dismissing and devaluing those who are not.

Many times in the reading I sensed that I was being told what my friends from school or colleagues in Christian organizations felt—things that I missed or had no words for as they happened. Patterns and systems that I may have found problematic, but that I didn't question (for long) or challenge.

Brown's story prompted me to continue to ask myself: How did and how do I contribute to the discomfort, diminishment, or erasure of another person because their way of being is unfamiliar, different, or "other"?

A generous teacher and thoughtful writer.

Powerful, honest, and full of love. This might be a good introduction to anti-racism for the conservative Christian in your life.... Austin is also Christian and weaves that into her essays as part of her experience. I loved everything about this.

Eye-opening read about one woman's experience as a black woman in the church and America.

I'm Still Here (Adapted for Young Readers) by Austin Channing Brown is an important book for its target readership, young Black girls (and boys for that matter), and an opportunity to better understand society for the rest of us.

Admittedly, for those of us who aren't Black, reading this will, or at least should, make us question some things we may have done or not done that helped to make our society less welcoming and less safe for others. Many of these things may not have been intentional, and may well have been unnoticed by us. That doesn't excuse what happened but doesn't need to be taken in a defensive manner. We need to become more aware, make conscious the effort to make the world better, and learn about the things that have become considered "the way it is," to nod to Bruce Hornsby.

The stories included cover experiences from Brown's youth, which makes them more relatable for young readers than many of the stories in the original. Many concepts are illustrated rather than given a deep theoretical explanation, though there is explanation. In fact, I think this method offers one of the best explanations/illustrations of how a place can be a "white space."

I have recommended this to both parents and readers who can benefit personally. I am eager to hear from some of my friends who are planning to share it, together, with their children. I know that having read this gave our discussions a much more solid foundation for my understanding of things I don't have firsthand experience with.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

I highly recommend this short, powerful, beautifully written book. The author reads the audio version, and she’s really good (I’ve found some authors aren’t great as audiobook readers). I think a lot of people would learn from and be moved by this book. I was. I appreciate and respect the author’s blunt honesty and her refusal to be crushed by her experiences.

Austin Brown is making me think about some weird, uncomfortable stuff.

Donated by Sher Atkinson

Eye opening, thought provoking, and much needed in today's world. Austin Channing Brown crafts 14 essays on what it means being a Black American. She talks about misconceptions, injustices, fear, tone policing, the barriers to success and so so much more. As a white person who is trying to be antiracist (and always learning more) this book opened my eyes to so many of the small microaggressions and things that I would never think of or have to go through as a white person. It reminds white readers that we still have far to go and can always learn more. It affirms with Black readers that what they go through is "normal" but certainly not fair or just. It's wrong and it will take white people more than a few diversity trainings to fix. Something I needed to read and really think about. Not just in passing, but really think and ACT on being more aware and changing the patterns and attitudes of our country.

Austin Channing Brown delivered truth after truth after truth in I’m Still Here. I was in a constant state of awe with an experience that mirrored my own and experiences people close to me have been through. Truly a stunning piece of literature.

Would love to see this added to any American Lit curriculum in high schools. Would be a more than suitable update to Black Boy (which I taught for several years) and probably more accessible/relatable. The most indicting and haunting quote from the book: "How long will it be before we finally choose to connect all the dots? How long before we confess the history of racism embedded in our systems of housing, education, health, criminal justice, and more? How long before we dig to the root?"

Reading this book is just one tiny step for white allies looking to pick up a shovel and start that work.

There is a common adage that to understand a person you need to walk in their shoes. Here is your chance to walk along side a black woman and experience through her eyes what being black in America is like.
I borrowed this as an audiobook from my local library. I highly recommend listening to this book as it is read by the author and hearing her words, in her voice, adds tremendously to the experience of the book.

The impassioned story of one woman’s journey into activism.

Brown’s book is part memoir and part jeremiad against American whiteness. She begins by describing her youth in a largely white neighborhood of Toledo. After her parents’ divorce, she went on to discover black culture, and affirm her own identity, in an African-American Cleveland neighborhood and, especially, in a black church. Through high school and then into college, Brown learned more about black history and culture and became more involved with racial reconciliation efforts. She especially saw herself as a possible bridge between black and white cultures. Most of her work has been through churches and progressive Christian organizations, but faith plays only a minor role in this book. The focus of the narrative is on the author’s recognition of—and fight against—“America’s commitment to violent, abusive, exploitative, immoral white supremacy, which seeks the absolute control of Black bodies.” Brown pulls no punches as she lambasts white culture for being, even at its most liberal, myopic and self-serving. She argues that “white fragility” and “white guilt” are ways in which whites absolve themselves of inherent racism. Discussing whites who, after her presentations on racism, confess to her their own racist opinions and actions, she points out that she cannot “offer absolution….I am not a priest for the white soul.” Throughout the book, the author writes with raw emotion and candid self-reflection. “I have become very intimate with anger,” she writes. Brown’s work will resonate with other activists of color, though it provides little direction for others. The author is clear that racism and white supremacy are here to stay and that even attempts to educate and enlighten are rarely fruitful. “I underestimated the enduring power, the lethal imagination, the desire for blood of white supremacy,” she writes. And later: “hope for me has died one thousand deaths.”

A powerful and necessarily uncomfortable text lacking suggestions for a path forward.

I’m not going to pretend that I found this easy to read. It is though, always easy to desire a more glib world, and to get crabby at the people who don’t comply with that desire.

In a way she’s like the Christian woman Malcolm X. I don’t say that as someone who makes a monster out of Malcolm. In a way though, Malcolm is easier to read, since his story is neatly finished, the excesses—Kennedy deserved to get shot, he declares, unintentionally comic [edit: at least decades and decades later; give me a break!]—left behind, like the dirt from the river that the gold prospector is exploring. Austin’s story isn’t finished yet, and she’s not unintentionally comically calling for the assassination of Biden or whatever, so there’s no wrapping up and coming together. It’s just a hard world, especially for those left behind by America. Some white people unapologetically attack Blacks, sometimes giving that unapologetic attack another name. And some of us can’t sleep at night, wringing our hands into the early hours of the morning that the Blacks aren’t polite to us, that they make us look bad, that they don’t like being forgotten about and left to their fate.

I don’t pretend to have the answers to her anguished questions.

…. After-note: I’m going through the diversities section, seeing which ones I see as bookish, scholarly stuff with lots of terms that need defining, you know, “humanities”, if you like—it’s ‘school’—and those which are more popular, like this “Dirty Little Secrets About Black History” book I’m reading, which is certainly one side of the popular mind. It’s not that scholarship doesn’t have a place, but Black history doesn’t //have// to be school-ish, you know; it just has to be Black. Whizz bang! Oppression! Pow! Bang! Racism!—you know. It certainly isn’t //Anglo// popular thought, you know; it’s rough and doesn’t spare the niceties of white feelings, you know. —(wringing hands) Oh, why aren’t people good to me…. —For a group that can be as quietly macho as intellectuals, I guess it is kinda surprising how we can take it for granted that everything and everybody should be soft and low-impact, you know. So I guess in the end, my experience with this book was shaped by not appreciating the sort of book that it is; it’s a popular Black book, even more popular (in that non-classic, non-bookish sense; I don’t really worry about sales figures; I ponder character, you know) than the Malcolm X memoir, which was obviously very long, not that popular books can’t be long, but it was written in a somewhat “classic” and magisterial way, you know. Malcolm made an opera about racism, you know. Austin made more of a pop rap beat, that’s right.

1. So much here to read and use in my personal introspection.

2. I'm curious as to why this only is in my library's teen section. I a) definitely find this accessible for teens and also b)am worried that some people may overlook it, or not seriously consider reading it, because it's not also in the general non- fiction collection.

Everyone should read this book. It made me think more about the words that I use and the actions that I take. I would love to be able to talk to the author in person. Now, just I hope that I can act on what I read and learned.

More about the church and being Christian than I expected, but Brown has great insights and painful and revealing stories to share.

Our experiences as black women, though I'm much younger, mirror each other. And her words speak out truths I am only now learning to articulate.

Took my breath away as in overwhelming, unrelenting, painful and gorgeous all at once. One of those I need to reread.

Austin Channing Brown tells of her experiences as a black woman in predominately white (and often Christian) spaces, speaking with honesty, eloquence, and conviction - pulling you forward with every page. (I read it in two sittings.)

In a word, her memoir is powerful. Each story grabs your attention, helping you to walk in her shoes and see life as she does. I thought her book was fantastic and beautifully written.

One slight push-back was I wish she would have helped delineate the differences between whiteness/white supremacy and white people (assuming they can be divided). Without a doubt white supremacy and racism go unnamed in white culture; however, being white isn't inherently wrong or evil or else we end up hating ourselves. Reconciliation needs to affirm goodness of being white while naming the evil in white supremacy. Hopefully that communicates. But - her primary goal wasn't to teach white people how to think about their own identity or race. It's our own struggle to accept our whiteness, what that means for ourselves, how that affects others, and all the while recognizing and naming the countless atrocities of our past.

If white and care to understand what life is like for a black people, this is your book. And I will add, if you're a white person and new to thinking about race, it's likely to shake you up, but it's needed. Recommended to all.

This is an excellent first-person account of race tailor-made for a white "progressive" audience. Brown is not soft or soothing but instead asks hard questions and tells uncomfortable truths. Every ally needs to read this book.

A memoir in which Brown discusses living in the US as both a black woman and a Christian. I remember enjoying this and really appreciating Brown's voice, but I've waited too long between finishing and reviewing to go into specifics. A good choice, though, to add to any list you might be making of books to read featuring diverse voices.

I'm Still Here read as less overtly instructive than some of the current anti-racist books (which is a criticism of none). It's (still) illuminating and compelling. Strong pick.

"I need a love that is troubled by injustice. A love that is provoked to anger when Black folks, including our children, lie dead in the streets. A love that can no longer be concerned with tone because it is concerned with life. A love that has no tolerance for hate, no excuses for racist decisions, no contentment in the status quo. I need a love that is fierce in its resilience and sacrifice. I need a love that chooses justice."

I listened to this one on audio and I need to run out and buy a print copy because there are so many gems found within the pages of this book. Austin Channing Brown is bold and honest about her experience as a Black Christian woman in America. She gives you a foundation of the racist history throughout the book and she explains through clear examples how it is woven into every fiber of this nation.

The parts of her memoir that really stuck out to me were her snippets on segregated education, the differences in black and white churches and navigating race in the corporate world. I can relate to her experiences about walking the line between standing up for yourself and being labeled aggressive or other racial stereotyoes because you point out racist behaviors and practices. I was fortunate enough to have teachers who were anti-racist and exposed us to non-white literature and history as early as junior high school. Sadly, most BIPOC don't even get to learn about their true history and contributions in this country until the college level.

I loved hearing it in her own voice and it really made me connect to what was in her heart. I think that really was the premise of this book. She wanted to show what is in Black people's hearts every day through her own life and experiences. This book is one that everyone needs to read because it offers a very unique perspective about traversing the world as a black woman who is Christian and refuses to accept that blackness is a monolith. She challenges readers to get uncomfortable because that is the only real path to sustainable and actionable change. If you are truly invested in becoming anti-racist and abolishing antiblackness in all the forms that it manifests, get this book. This bookdragon rates this one 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥.