Gather Me A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me

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

“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
 
For Glory Edim, that "friend of my mind" is books. Edim, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants growing up in Virgina, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, but her love of books stretches far back: to public libraries alongside her little brothers after elementary school while her mother was working; to high school librairies where she discovered books she wasn't being taught in class; to dorm rooms and airplanes and subway rides—and, eventually, to a community of half a million other readers.
 
When Edim's father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, she and her brothers were left with a single mother and little money, often finding a safe space at their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older, she discovered 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 writing full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others helped her to value herself: to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their own stories. Gather Me is a glowing testament to the power of representation and the lasting impact of literature to gather our disparate parts and put them back together.

Glory Edim is the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, a book club and digital platform that celebrates the uniqueness of Black literature and sisterhood. She edited the Well-Read Black Girl anthology, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and named a best book of the year by Library Journal. The winner of the Innovator's Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Edim worked as a creative strategist for over ten years and serves on the board of New York City's Housing Works Bookstore.