Bon Courage: Essays on Inheritance, Citizenship, and a Creative Life

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It is hard for any of us to separate what is imagined from what is real. We are all story-tellers of our own lives, narrating what we observe, making sense of it all. What happens around us is equally complicated for, as the writer, Anaèis Nin put it, "we don't see the world as it is, as we see it as we are." In that liminal space between what is and what we think it is, we write history: our own and that of others. That word, history, has its origins in the Greek term, historia, which implies a dynamic process of finding out, of inquiry, rather than the passivity of recording. This collection then, is a similar endeavor. It is a writer's attempt to train her eye on what is unfolding around her, as well as herself, all of it viewed through a kaleidoscope constructed of four mirrors: place, culture, politics, and a self that shares its borders with all three. Words are the glass beads inside. Twist the instrument and the world rearranges itself. Bon Courage is a fierce, moving, eclectic and intimate collection-wide ranging and inclusive in the essay mode, deep and revealing as a memoir, with the dynamics and layering of great fiction. As if that's not enough, it sings. Ru Freeman is able to participate intimately while bringing global perspectives to subjects as diverse as Bowie and Dylan, Palestine, 9/11, hairstyles, personal and cultural identity, and #Me too. This is a resplendent and compendious exploration of great empathy, insight, and bon courage indeed. It's going to make a great book. It's going to make a difference"--