Book Review: Unbound by Tarana Burke
Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke
After a long, difficult day working with young Black girls who had suffered the unimaginable, Tarana tossed in her bed, unable to sleep as a fit of memories intruded into her thoughts. How could she help these girls if she couldn't even be honest with herself and face her own demons? A fitful night led to pages and pages of scribbled notes with two clear words at the top: Me too.
Tarana Burke is the founder and activist behind the largest social movement of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the me too movement, but first she had to find the strength to say me too herself. Unbound is the story of how she came to those two words, after a childhood growing up in the Bronx with a loving mother that took a terrible turn when she was sexual assaulted. She became withdrawn and her self split: there was the Tarana that was a good student, model kid, and eager to please young girl, and then there was the Tarana that she hid from everyone else, the one she believed to be bad. The one that would take all the love in her life away if she revealed.
Tarana's debut memoir explores how to piece back together our fractured selves. How to not just bring the me too movement back to empathy, but how to empathize with our past selves, with out bad selves, and how to begin to love ourselves unabashedly. Healing starts with empowerment, and to Tarana empowerment starts with empathy. This is her story of finding that for herself, and then spreading it to an entire world. (Goodreads)
The #MeToo hashtag went viral, prompting millions of people to share experiences of sexual assault
Tarana Burke was awakened one Sunday morning in 2017 by her phone. It was exploding with messages. The hashtag #MeToo had gone viral on Twitter. Thousands of women were sharing their experiences of being sexually abused, and using the hashtag to signal solidarity.
Burke was shocked. She had been building a movement to support survivors of sexual assault for years, using the slogan “Me Too” to represent how important empathy among survivors is for healing. But she’d had nothing to do with this Twitter storm.
The outpouring of reactions was a response to news stories about movie executive Harvey Weinstein’s decades of predatory and abusive behavior toward young actors – behavior that had gone unpunished for decades. Burke applauded the fact that Hollywood actors were stepping forward to share these experiences, and inspiring others to share theirs, too.
But she couldn’t help but notice that the vast majority of those women were white. Where were the voices of Black women, or Latinas? Burke had spent her career trying to create space for marginalized survivors of abuse. But now they seemed to be getting squeezed out of the movement she’d worked so hard to create.
Burke was also concerned that women were being encouraged to share very raw experiences without any follow-up to check if they were OK, or support in processing those declarations.
As the day went on, she kept checking Twitter. By then, there were hundreds of thousands of responses, all sharing experiences using the hashtag #MeToo. One particular response touched Burke especially. A woman shared an experience of being sexually assaulted in college. She’d never told anyone about it, she said. But seeing everyone else share experiences had made her realize she had nothing to be ashamed of. She wasn’t alone.
Burke started crying. The woman’s words moved her deeply, and made her realize that while she hadn’t chosen to turn her work into a viral hashtag, the Twitter outpouring did have the potential to help survivors, and spread the work she’d been developing her whole life.
#MeToo was reaching hundreds of thousands of people around the world, showing how deeply toxic and ubiquitous sexual abuse is, and showing survivors that they aren’t alone. (Paminy, February 23, 2022)
The phrase
"Me Too" developed into a broader movement following the 2017 use of #MeToo as a hashtag after the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations. On October 15, 2017, Burke was notified by her friends that the MeToo hashtag was being used online. Burke decided to be in service and shape the movement to make it about "empowermental empathy".
Time named Burke, among a group of other prominent female activists dubbed "the silence breakers". Burke is currently the Senior Director of Girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn, which strives to help young women of color increase their overall development through various programs and classes. (Wikipedia)
Tarana Burke is an American activist from The Bronx, New York, who started the Me Too movement. In 2006, Burke began using metoo to help other women with similar experiences to stand up for themselves. Over a decade later, in 2017, #MeToo became a viral hashtag when Alyssa Milano and other women began using it to tweet about the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases. The phrase and hashtag quickly developed into a broad-based, and eventually international movement.Burke, (born September 12, 1973) in Bronx, New York, and raised in the area.She grew up in a low-income, working-class family in a housing project and was raped and sexually assaulted both as a child and a teenager. Her mother supported her recovery from these violent acts and encouraged her to be involved in the community. In her biography Burke states that these experiences inspired her to work to improve the lives of girls who undergo extreme hardships. As a teenager, she began improving the lives of young girls living in marginalized communities. Burke attended Alabama State University then transferred and graduated from Auburn University at Montgomery. During her time in college, she organized press conferences and protests regarding economic and racial justice. An activist since 1989, Burke moved to Selma, Alabama, in the late 1990s after graduating college.After working with survivors of sexual violence, Burke developed the nonprofit "Just Be" in 2003, which was an all-girls program for Black girls aged 12 to 18. In 2006, Burke founded the Me Too movement and began using the phrase "Me Too" to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and assault in society.
In 2008, she moved to Philadelphia and worked at Art Sanctuary Philadelphia and other non-profits. She was a consultant for the 2014 Hollywood movie Selma, based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel, Hosea Williams, Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis.
Burke is a Black activist who has spent her life working with girls of color, helping them overcome trauma while teaching themself-esteem. She did all this for decades while keeping a key element of her own life buried deep inside. When she was seven she was raped by a young man in her neighborhood. She didn’t tell her parents, knowing her stepfather would likely beat or kill the man and end up in prison. There was no going to the police for justice. When she was nine it happened again with a different boy. At that point, Burke was left with no emotional recourse but to believe it was her fault. She was nasty, dirty. Her only way to cope was to split herself. The outer girl others saw—good student, athlete—and the inner bad girl who let men do things to her.
Tarana Burke has always been struck by a commitment to justice and equity. As the founder of the 'me too' movement and subsequent nonprofit, Burke works to dismantle the cycle of sexual violence and other systemic issues that disproportionately impact marginalized people. Tarana's passion for community organizing began in the late 1980s, when as a young girl she joined a youth development organization called 21st Century. Since then she has launched initiatives around issues of racial discrimination, housing inequality, and economic justice. Her work has connected a vast network of influential people, including much of Hollywood, the founder of the Women's March Tamika Mallory, leading intellectuals and authors like Ishmael Beah and Gloria Steinem. She was 2017 TIME Person of the Year and the winner of the 2019 Sydney Peace Prize, and has been the recipient of countless other accolades. (BookBrowse.com)
I listened to the audiobook read by Tarana Burke. The killing of 15 year old Latasha Harlins was an injustice that was unknown to me until reading about it in this memoir, or Annie Lee Cooper, an African-American civil rights activist in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, who is best known for punching Dallas County, Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark and being shoved to the ground. Living in Marion, Alabama, 28 miles from Selma, I was made aware of the historical significance behind the voters right movement and the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama that was caused by the shooting and death of Jimmie Lee Jackson which inspired the March in 1965, a major event in the movement that helped gain congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This opened the door to millions of African Americans being able to vote again in Alabama and across the Southern United States, regaining participation as citizens in the political system for the first time since the turn of the 20th century.
“Sexual violence doesn’t discriminate, but the response to it does.”
I’m grateful to Tarana Burke for her hard work and bringing awareness to sexual violence and creating the Me Too movement. Although I have never personally experienced sexual assault, but I have heard several accounts of incest involving family.
I was especially enlightened to read (listen) to Burke speak on her journey and work in Selma. Alabama, particularly with Rose and Hank Sanders, Malika Sanders and Ms. Joanne Bland. I have met, crossed paths, and encountered this persons in various ways. However, I was unaware of their misgivings toward Ms. Burke during those times. As Senator Malika Sanders Fortier took the congressional seat in my district of Perry County, she has taken ill and her father, Henry “Hank“ Sanders is currently running for her senate seat once again. I adore and admire the work of Ms. Joanne Bland.
This memoir was such an eye opener and a profound revelation. I hope that Tarana Burke keeps working within the organization’s that she is dedicated to and continues to make a positive impact on herself and others lives.
Follow Up Reading:
- For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
- I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice by Yusuf Salaam
- The Value in the Valley: A Black Woman's Guide Through Life's Dilemmas and Faith in the Valley: Lessons for Women on the Journey to Peace by Ilyana Vanzant and
Links:
Rose Sanders: https://www.selmajubilee.com/founders
Joanne “Ms. Ann” Bland (born July 29, 1952, in Selma, Alabama) is the co-founder and former director of the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama. Bland was a highly active participant in the Civil Rights Movement from her earliest days, and was the youngest person to have been jailed during any civil rights demonstration during that period. Bland grew up in segregated Selma, Alabama, where she was not allowed to enter certain stores and was only allowed to go in the library and movie theater on days labeled "colored." As a result of growing up in segregation Bland lost her mother, who died in a "white" hospital waiting for a transfusion of "black blood." Her grandmother encouraged Bland and her sister to march and become a freedom fighter to fight for their freedom, even though her father disapproved due to his fear for their lives. Her father's objections did not stop Bland, who became active in the movement when she was eight years old. When she was eight years old, she attended a meeting with the Dallas County Voters League with her grandmother.
Bland began her activism in 1961, attending a freedom and voters' rights meeting presided over by Martin Luther King Jr. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members active in Selma organized local teenagers to participate in the movement, including marching on "Bloody Sunday" and "Turn Around Tuesday". On "Bloody Sunday", March 7, 1965, Bland witnessed fellow activists being beaten by the police and Alabama State Troopers. By the time she was 11 years old, Bland had been arrested and documented 13 times. Bland's first time being arrested was when she was eight years old at the beginning of her activism. During the march while Bland witnessed people being beaten, they could not get away from police as they moved in from the sides, back, and front. Bland's sister, Lynda Blackmon Lowery, was the youngest person that participated in the march, she was 14 years old at that time. Lowery saw people putting Bland in the back of a white car and she thought her sister was dead, but when she got to the car, she soon realized that Bland just fainted. When Bland woke up, she could feel her sister's blood dripping on her face from being hit on the head many times. Bland helped protect white Northerners who chose to participant in the march, they included ministers and college students. On March 21, 1965, she marched from Selma to Montgomery and that same year in August the Voting Rights Act was signed. Bland was one of seven black students who integrated A. G. Parish High School in Alabama. -Wikipedia
James Luther Bevel (October 19, 1936 – December 19, 2008) was a minister and a leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As the Director of Direct Action and of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma voting rights movement, and the 1966 Chicago open housing movement. He suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963. Bevel strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
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