Are We Free Yet?
The Black Queer Guide to Divorcing America
- 2023 INDIES Finalist
- Finalist, Self-Help (Adult Nonfiction)
Part personal reflection, part interactive call for action, Tina Strawn’s Are We Free Yet? follows the queer Black activist’s search for freedom and details practical methods for self-reflection and healing.
The book’s four parts examine different aspects of the Black liberation movement, showing how they impacted Strawn’s relationship with the US as a queer woman of color. Strawn draws on her two divorces, struggles with mental and sexual health, and personal “Blaxit” (Black exit) to Costa Rica as examples of both Black grief and joy. Each chapter is concise, ranging from small paragraphs to a few pages at most. Poems, curated song playlists, directed questions, and journal prompts are interspersed throughout, encouraging unique interactive engagement.
The focus on Strawn’s personal experience as an activist results in a more casual, accessible conversation about systematic racism, if with an absence of research and scholarly sources to back it. Less of a structured analysis than it is a compilation of short vignettes, the text still makes for fast reading with a moment-by-moment sensibility. Indeed, Strawn ends many chapters with journal prompts and activities relating to the chapter’s content—useful for those in the activism space. Many “artifacts” are also interspersed throughout; some (including the book’s poems and song playlists) are creative breaks; others (as with full legal bills) are more esoteric.
In her personalized text Are We Free Yet?, Tina Strawn goes beyond attempting to “solve” racism to make space for a healing, self-reflective analysis of big-picture questions, including those of race, class, gender, sexuality, and politics.
Reviewed by
Allison Janicki
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
