50 pages • 1 hour read
Brené Brown, Tarana BurkeYou Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience
Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “Honoring Our Stories, Transforming Our Pain by Deran Young”
Deran Young, a therapist and facilitator, recalls her son coming home from school one day, crying because he wished he was white. Young, who is committed to the message of Black Lives Matter and the unpacking of racial trauma, felt that she had done something wrong. As a child, Young experienced sexual abuse and periods of homelessness. She has seen firsthand how white supremacy impacts families and her communities. Although she wanted to protect her son, Young realized that it was most important for her to validate his feelings and to name the thing that made him feel that way—racism.
Young argues that racial trauma pervades Black communities. Trying to navigate white supremacy means that Black individuals feel they must put on a suit of armor and use code-switching, a technique that Young says requires the denial of a person’s core self. Vulnerability is seen as a weakness, something that might render a person at risk. Young asserts that this armor also keeps Black people from making connections with others and from being vulnerable with themselves. Young explains that her Black patients often have difficulty engaging with their emotions and vulnerability. Both internal and external factors play a role in the trauma they carry, and many see vulnerability as an invitation to pain. According to Young, vulnerability is the key to resistance and recovery: “Our collective internal protection mechanisms are transmitted strategies of survival that we inherited from our ancestors. However, vulnerability in the face of racial trauma challenges the operating systems of oppression” (124). When Young visited Ghana in 2009, she experienced healing. She felt she was in a place where she could connect with others freely with her whole being, and she hopes to help Black people in the United States experience that same feeling. Young introduces the term sankofa to the reader. This word comes from the Twi language of Ghana; it means go back and get it. Young explains that the term is often depicted by a large bird with its head facing backward, plucking an egg from its own back. Sankofa means to take the learned wisdom of the past and apply it to the present.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Running Out of Gas by Sonya Renee Taylor”
Sonya Renee Taylor writes about her relationship with her mother. Growing up, she saw herself in her mother, Terry. Like her mother, Taylor numbed her pain and tried to fill a hole left my lack of intimacy. Terry was an alcoholic, a disease that killed her. After she died, Taylor struggled to make sense of her own emotions, and she states that she turned to sex because that is what she always did when facing challenges in her adult life.
After meeting up with an old friend from college and staying the night, Taylor was still not satisfied and began driving around Washington, DC, in search of another lover that she knew was not good for her. When her car ran out of gas, Taylor parked on the side of the road and screamed. Suddenly, her therapist called. Taylor told her therapist what she was doing and realized that it was not sex she was in search for; she was looking for something that could alleviate the pain she felt after her mother’s death. Taylor ultimately realizes that her search was for a way to be vulnerable and accepting of her pain.
Chapter 14 Summary: “My Journey: Vulnerability, Rage, and Being Black in the Art World by Irene Antonia Diane Reece”
Irene Antonia Diane Reece is a contemporary artist and activist. She uses pictures from her family’s history to tell the multi-faceted story of her Black identity. Looking at the images helps Reece to feel connected to her ancestors and to let go of her pain. She writes, “Looking through archives has power. I believe it can be used as a form of activism and healing” (146). When she incorporated a picture of a child’s birthday party from her family archives into her work as a graduate student, members of her art community pushed back, accusing her of staging the photograph. Reece realized that they had never seen Black joy or artwork depicting it. She insisted that Black people, like all people, have complex identities and intricate lives.
Reece is a proponent of looking to the past for healing. When she was young, she experienced many symptoms that a doctor attributed to a prolactinoma pituitary tumor. The people around her had been dismissive of her pain and discomfort as a young girl. She writes that going through family albums helped her to heal the emotional pain she felt for her unvalidated physical pain.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Unlearning Shame and Remembering Love by Yolo Akili Robinson”
Yolo Akili Robinson is a non-binary writer. When they were approached by Tarana Burke to write an essay for the anthology, they were excited to share what they knew about what it meant to be Black and queer. However, they soon found they were struggling to put words on the page; the ones they did manage to write did not feel like they were authentic to who Robinson is. Robinson recounts how they realized what was blocking them from writing the essay: to write about shame meant that they would have to write about their own experiences.
Robinson explores how white supremacy contributes to Black shame. When Robinson was a child, their father expressed disgust that his child was associating so closely with women and taking on their mannerisms. Robinson did not realize at the time that they were encountering their first taste of anti-gay bias, a byproduct of white supremacy. Shame teaches people to hide from others and themselves. Robinson explains that the intergenerational trauma that was passed down from slavery projects the idea that Black people must never rest, stick their necks out too far, or acknowledge mental illness. The fear of what white supremacy can do outweighs need. Black queer and nonbinary individuals face even more complex shame structures. Their identities are representative of the very concept white supremacy seeks to eradicate. Robinson asserts that it is time to unlearn these inherited patterns.
Chapters 12-15 Analysis
Young uses the word sankofa to illustrate her point that Black people can engage with vulnerability by beginning to be vulnerable with themselves and by looking at their pasts and speaking the truth about their experiences. Sankofa connects to the theme Vulnerability as Resistance. By examining one’s past with forgiveness, self-love, and learned wisdom, one can fight back against systems that promote shame.
Sankofa plays a key role in Chapters 13 and 14. Sonya Renee Taylor lived and survived by running from her past, similarly to her mother, Terry, an alcoholic. Taylor once saw in herself the things that she hated about her mother: “My mother and I were a mirror loop of shame, circling our own addictions only to end up staring at the other, which was to be staring at ourselves” (133). The more Taylor ran away from her mother and the parts of her that were like her mother, the further she got from herself. By confronting The Nature of Shame and embracing vulnerability by naming her emotions, Taylor learned to live and love her whole self. Instead of running from her mother, Taylor worked with a therapist to uncover the depth of their relationship and her emotions surrounding her mother’s death.
Similarly, Reece dedicates her art to developing an understanding of the entire selves of Black people. She pushes back against those who wish to diminish or box in Black experience. For Reece, sankofa is key to unlocking the multi-faceted lives of Black people and the beauty of vulnerability. Reece recalls how looking through boxes of family photos helped her to re-engage with her identity, giving her the fuel she needed to advocate for herself and others, and helping her to be vulnerable. She then experienced healing. When Robinson struggled to write a piece for the anthology, they realized that they were being held back by shame at their vulnerability. However, by looking back, Robinson found the central message to their essay: that people are not their shame.
Robinson exposes how The Trauma of Racism and White Supremacy contributes to how people perceive and are led by their pasts and their ancestral histories. By examining the full breadth of white supremacy’s influence, people can begin to unpack how power and control contribute to how they see themselves and others. Robinson started their essay with a desire to share the truths they learned throughout their career: that gender socialization manifests as shame, that a belief in the concept of “normal” contributes to hatred and disconnection, and that anti-gay bias is directed example of white supremacy’s violence and hatred of women. Robinson realizes, however, that it is not enough to simply speak these truths. They need to bolster them with the reality of Robinson’s personal experiences. Because resistance comes through vulnerability, Robinson needed to be real about their encounters with anti-gay bias and white supremacy to develop a clear message of change.
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