Gather Me

A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me

By: Glory Edim

Narrated by: Glory Edim

Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

A “dramatic [and] ingeniously crafted” (Los Angeles Times) 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.

“A beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an expansive and ever-growing love for words and for language.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year

“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, Beloved

For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.

Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, she found 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 prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.

Gather Me is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.

©2022 Glory Edim (P)2022 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“A highly person memoir . . . [Edim] shares how books became an escape and a classroom. Her book is most compelling when she describes her interactions with these books, including the ways she interpreted them initially and reinterpreted them upon subsequent readings. . . . This title is a strong and welcome addition to the genre of biblio-memoirs.”—Library Journal

“Professional bibliophile pays tribute to the books that made her…. Edim rose to prominence as the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, an influential and far-reaching literary organization. In Gather Me, she reflects on a lifetime of devoted reading. From childhood on, whatever was going on in Edim’s life, books were a constant presence in her survival and self-development. . . . Gather Me is a book for anyone who has ever loved books. A love story that attests to the power of literature.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Gather Me is a full and beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an expansive, and ever-growing love for words, and for language. What a gift, to have that love reflected outwards.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year