You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience edited by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown is an anthology of experiences by Black writers and thinkers. Each essay explores themes central to Burke and Brown’s work on vulnerability, shame, empathy, and white supremacy. In this anthology, writers such as Austin Channing Brown, Prentis Hemphill, Laverne Cox, and Imani Perry explore their unique experiences with shame and vulnerability. These works expose the way trauma and white supremacy contribute to the advancement of oppression, the degradation of health, and the continuation of dangerous and harmful systems within Black communities.

This guide utilizes the 2022 Random House trade paperback edition.

Content Warning: This collection of essays tackles stories and issues surrounding sexual violence, abuse, and racism.

Summary

Tarana Burke and Brené Brown’s anthology You Are Your Best Thing opens with an epigraph from Black American author Toni Morrison’s book Beloved (1987). The quotation comes from a scene where the protagonist, Sethe, is worried that her identity and value were lost when her child died. The declaration, “You are your best thing,” is a rejection of the idea that Black women must always sacrifice themselves for the needs and identities of others.