Womanish

McLarin gathers forthright essays reflecting on love, friendship, motherhood, and, above all, overt and "thinly-veiled" expressions of racism. In her candid title essay, she considers her transition from girlhood to womanhood, the female body, and her experiences of midlife online dating, where misogyny was apparent--misogyny, like racism, rooted in fear. Bold, well-crafted essays on living, loving, and striving while black.

Full of feeling and absorbing incident, Kim McLarin's Womanish is a companion book for searchers of the soul. In the tradition of James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Henry Thoreau, McLarin's essays reveal an original mind in action and set to take action. Read Womanish to be inspired, to get angry, and to learn to hold and use that anger in our incendiary times.

Womanish is the education the United States needs but doesn't deserve. Not only has McLarin done the homework, she's created an elegant cheat sheet in the form of thirteen perfect essays.