Creator of the popular Well-Read Black Girl series of books that saved her

There’s no one better to be a biblio invite than Glory Edim, creator of Well-Read Black Girl, a book group with nearly half a million Instagram followers. Fans of her group, a leading Black women writer, may want to read about the authors behind this self-made literary title. But “Pick Me Up: A Tribute to Surviving Books” offers much more: a fascinating biography full of hairpins and woven leitmotifs that might seem cleverly crafted if it were. it’s all true.

Edim grew up in Arlington, Va., the daughter of an architect and a teacher, both Nigerian immigrants. His mother read to him as a baby, and Edim read to his younger brother, Maurice, after his parents divorced when he was 8, his father mysteriously disappeared and his mother took on two jobs to support the family. They enjoyed “Corduroy,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Charlotte’s Web,” and disappeared into the Arlington Public Library, silently calling out “brother” and “sister ” that they may find each other when the time comes. to walk.

After his mother’s remarriage and the arrival of another sibling, Edim became a teenage parent, changing diapers, picking up his siblings from daycare of children and at school, fed them and put them to bed. But his experience was not shared by anyone he knew – or reflected in the many books he read.

And his life became more difficult. His emotionally damaged stepfather criticized his self-esteem, telling Edim that he would be “encouraged when he was 15” although he wrote, “I was a young churchgoer whose rebellion his biggest was trying to steal more time. read.”

When 11-year-old Edim saw Maya Angelou’s portrait at her inauguration in 1993, it was a revelation.

“Imagine being a teenager being bullied by a stepfather who went out of his way to make sure I was completely ashamed of my body and its sexuality. “And then think … the surprise and joy” of reading Angelou, “who brought me to the person I once was.” She held poems like “Still Me.” Wake up” as if he was “writing the notes of my approaching womanhood.” Through Angelou, he found Nikki Giovanni, James Baldwin, Ntozake Shange and Toni Morrison.

Edim met the poet again in high school, when his favorite, white Advanced Placement English teacher (he had no Black teachers) gave “Catcher in the Rye,” which he hated, as if it were a “holy offering” and accused Angelou, his favorite author, of bad grammar. But the teacher listened patiently when she explained why Angelou couldn’t read her native language, and helped her develop her argument against her. He therefore helped to develop critical thinking that led Edim to see the wide-ranging flaws in the curriculum – even though he did not see them. He writes: “Sometimes I find myself arguing with Mr. Burns in my head.

As a teenager, Edim effectively became a single parent, not only to his siblings but also to his mother, whose divorce from her second husband left her make him depressed and depressed. “A strange zombie,” his mother stopped a lot to stand up, get out, and, most importantly, say – for five years. Edim had no adults to turn to; a family friend she went to said her mother “has a tyrant.”

A summary of Edim’s life as an undergraduate at Howard University at this point should make any professor think twice about judging students who are dry in class. He would get up at five in the morning to wash and feed his mother and discuss with Maurice about who would pick up their brother from school to buy food. Now, she writes, “I had my classes to attend, the curriculum, the daily challenge of becoming an average, happy, successful college student.” , not a desperate, tired carer, a sister and a daughter who couldn’t do it. keep the lights on.”

He was also worried about the safety of his brothers after the beating of Lord Rodney and other incidents of police brutality. Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” gave him “the words to express that futile impulse to try to protect the people you love from a system you can’t control.”

While Edim was trying to understand the mother he had and the mother he lost, he read the book “Outside Sister” by Audre Lorde, and the switch flipped. Lorde writes: “My mother taught me to live from a very young age by her example. His silence also taught me isolation, anger, mistrust, self-doubt and sadness.” Survival, the author adds, is the greatest gift, and “sometimes, for Black mothers, the only gift possible.”

With Lorde’s help, Edim realized that he was now truly motherless—coincidentally, while on a flight to Nigeria to meet his father and, after more than ten years of separation, she became “someone else’s child again. ” In the end, both of his parents came back into his life in a series of miraculous events that were thoroughly enjoyed without spoilers.

Edim’s first book, “The Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Finding Ourselves,” is a book written by Black writers who answer the question “When did you first see yourself in literature?” “Collect me” is his answer.

You can read it for its amazing story alone, but don’t read it. Read it to see how libraries can be a valuable refuge for children whose families are out of control. Read it to see how white-dominated high school curricula can disenfranchise and disenfranchise Black students. Read it because many of the books that raised, guided and strengthened Edim are the ones that MAGA Republicans want banned.

And read it because, as Baldwin once said, “You think your pain and your sorrows are unprecedented in the history of the world, but now you are.”

Margot Mifflin is a professor at New York University and the author, most recently, “I want Miss America: An Agent’s 100-Year Quest to Define Feminism.”