To My Beloveds

August 9, 2021
Minister Bailey debuts with a wide-ranging, considered collection of essays inspired by the lessons she learned doing restorative community work as founder of the Faith Matters Network. The short entries examine what Bailey terms “radical hope”—or the idea that “the material conditions of the world can be better and that (humans) have the capacity to bring about that change in the here and now”—and its three characteristics: memory, imagination, and living. The pieces, which take the form of letters, focus heavily on Bailey’s faith life and experiences as Black woman, with some addressed to ancestors, personal heroes, and, most poignantly, her own unborn son. Memories of her mother’s death from cancer and a friend’s from suicide are interspersed with reflections about living as “an act of willful defiance against the death dealing forces of hate that would see me and my kindred eradicated and erased from the tomes of history.” Instances of bigotry in Bailey’s life mingle with historical and current violence against Black Americans, as seen in instances of police brutality and a pandemic that has “devastated communities.” Bailey’s call to action to build bridges and heal communities will resonate widely.

Starred review from September 1, 2021

Bailey's new book breathes new life into epistolary nonfiction in a poignant collection about remembrance, gratitude, grief, and hope. Ordained minister and public theologian Bailey looks back on the mentors in her life (many from the faith community), the losses (her mother's death from cancer), and the collective death of the soul wrought by racism (both individual and institutional). The author's letters speak to their recipients but also to the reader, which allows those who don't share her background to understand her experience growing up as a Black girl in white society and as a faith leader working to enact change in her community and beyond. And while there is much pain contained in the pages of this slim volume, there is also hope--hope that springs from clergy embracing the movement toward social justice and hope embodied in the person of Bailey's soon-to-be-born son Max. Bailey's hope is based not on passive acceptance but in her philosophical blue print for change: Recover, Repair, and Reimagine. VERDICT Interspersed with allusions to Toni Morrison's seminal Beloved, Bailey's book is simultaneously evocative and provocative.--Gail Eubanks, Univ. of Missouri, Springfield

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