Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim (Hardcover)

Nonfiction - Biographies & Autobiographies - Memoir - African American & Black

Published: 10/29/2024

An inspiring memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl.

“A beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an expansive and ever-growing love for words and for language.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”—Toni Morrison, Beloved
 
For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.
 
Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, she found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.
 
Gather Me is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Glory Edim is a literary tastemaker, entrepreneur, and advocate for diverse voices in literature. In 2015, she founded Well-Read Black Girl (WRBG), an online platform and book club dedicated to celebrating the works of Black women authors and creating a supportive online community for readers. Under Edim's leadership, WRBG has grown into a nonprofit organization, hosting events, book festivals, and author conversations that highlight the richness and diversity of Black literature. Her efforts have earned her accolades such as the 2017 Innovator's Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and the Madam C.J. Walker Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. As an author herself, Edim has contributed to the literary landscape with her bestselling anthologies Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves , and On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library.

" Gather Me is a beautiful, deeply introspective, and tender journey. Edim is one of the most important nurturers of the Black literary tradition, and now she stands elegantly within it as a writer." --Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America

"Gather Me is a beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an expansive, and ever-growing love for words and for language. What a gift, to have that love reflected outward." --Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year

"With candor and tenderness, Glory Edim gathers us as if welcoming us to her porch or stoop or kitchen table, a sacred space where she whispers her poignant testimony and reveals her scars. It's proof that words--written and spoken--enlighten, restore, heal. This ode to Black scribes is a resting place and a balm." --#1 New York Times bestselling author Renée Watson

"A dramatic life story full of hairpin turns and interwoven leitmotifs that might seem ingeniously crafted if it weren't all true." --The Los Angeles Times

"This is the ultimate book for book lovers. If you aren't familiar with Glory Edim, you should be." --theSkimm

" Gather Me offers a tender homage to the books that have cradled Glory Edim through life's storms, stitching together pieces of her identity with the delicate thread of story." --Frederick Joseph, New York Times bestselling author of Patriarchy Blues

"If ever there was a piece of art that ritualized the transgressive wonder of tender hand-holding and show-and-tell, it is Gather Me." --Kiese Laymon, award-winning author of Heavy: An American Memoir

"Glory Edim's Gather Me is a moving memoir and a powerful testament to Black literature's capacity to heal, guide, and help us become the best women, mothers, lovers, and daughters we can be." --Naomi Jackson, author of The Star Side of Bird Hill

"In Gather Me, Edim has written a profound testimony of how to re-emerge and soar in the wake of life's storms." --Mahogany L. Browne, author of Chrome Valley

" Gather Me is a book-lover's memoir. It's for those of us who have been nourished, challenged, comforted, emboldened, and transformed by books." --Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

"In her plucky, intimate memoir, Glory Edim, the creator of the Well-Read Black Girl book club, tethers the books and authors she has found and loved to her own rocky journey of self-discovery--it's reader catnip." --BookPage, starred review

"Heartfelt and absorbing . . . Readers who enjoy coming-of-age memoirs will find much to love." --Booklist, starred review

"This title is a strong and welcome addition to the genre of biblio-memoirs." --Library Journal

"A love story that attests to the power of literature." --Kirkus Reviews

"Edim beautifully illuminates how discovering or revisiting formative texts can confer all the warmth and wisdom of chatting with a clutch of aunties." --Publishers Weekly