White Picket Fences

     BOOK REVIEW: Privilege. The word alone can make us flinch. The notion that, for no good reason, some might have it better than others offends our sensibilities. Yet until we talk about privilege, we'll never fully understand it or find our way forward.
     Amy Julia Becker  welcomes us into her life, from the charm of her privileged Southern childhood to her adult experience in the Northeast and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She shows how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects, and how it can prevent us from loving our neighbors well.
     White Picket Fences invites us to respond to privilege with generosity, humility, and hope. It opens us to questions we are afraid to ask, so that we can walk further from fear and closer to love, in all its fragile and mysterious possibilities.

     MY REVIEW:     This book is one that I really enjoyed. The author was real and honest, and did not try to hide the sometimes ugly truth of the matter. I appreciated the intent in writing it, and the many different subjects she covered. I found it to be far broader than just dealing with privilege. I found:
-teaching our children about the hard history between white and black people
-seeing people through the lens of love changes the way we value them
-and many more tenors of truth that all intertwine with her subject of privilege.
     So often, nonfiction requires much concentration (and even discipline) to get the point and bring it home. But I found this book to grab and hold my attention far better than others I've read. It was not dry or stuffy, yet the content was far from light and shallow.
     One thing mentioned here was the hard fact that even if you try to help the suffering around you, it's drops in a bucket. So much suffering, so little you can do. But I was challenged to do my part anyway. Even if I only make the smallest ripple of difference in the broad scheme of things, to that person/persons it was a wave. To quote Dr. Seuss (or Taylor Hanson, Google can't decide), "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world". Even our smallest differences are huge to someone.
     Amy Julia has written three other books: Small Talk: Learning From my Children About What Matters Most; A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny; and Penelope Ayers. I will have to look them up sometime.


  I received a copy of this book from TYNDALE PUBLISHERS, and was not required to write a positive review.