How to Fix a Broken Record

Thoughts on Vinyl Records, Awkward Relationships, and Learning to Be Myself

By: Amena Brown

Narrated by: Amena Brown

Allow God to heal the broken record of your soul, so you can step into your calling, speak up for what's right, and dance your own story of God's grace.

What does the soundtrack in your head sound like? The hurtful words of others and the failures of your past often determine what record you play the most in your mind. Those painful repetitions often keep us from speaking up, standing up for what's right, being loved, pursuing our dreams, and growing closer to God.

Spoken word poet Amena Brown's broken records played messages about how she wasn't worthy to be loved. But after years of playing those destructive rhythms over and over, How to Fix a Broken Record chronicles her journey of healing as she's allowed the music of God's love to play on repeat instead.

From bad dates to marriage lessons at Waffle House, from learning to love her hair to learning to love an unexpected season of life, from discovering the power of saying no and the freedom to say yes, Amena offers keep-it-real stories your soul can relate to. Along the way, you'll discover how to:

• Recognize the negative messages that play on repeat in your mind
• Replace them with the truth that you are a beloved child of God
• And find new joy in the beautiful music of your life

©2017 Amena Brown (P)2017 Zondervan

This book is now required reading in my family

Anema’s soulful, honest words touched my soul in places I didn’t even realize I was hiding from. She made me laugh, cry, cry harder & praise Jesus. As a white mom of a biracial daughter, this book gave me a deeper insight of thoughts & fears my daughter may have growing up with brown skin in America. Anema’s words challenged my faith in the best ways possible & will now be required reading for my 3 daughters when they get older. Thank you Anema for sharing your life, heart, soul & humor with us.

beautifully and creatively written .

The chapter about spiritual rest made me extremely emotional , thank you for writing this book !

Please listen to this amazing book

Ameena Brown shows us how to live a life of faith in the midst of reality. This is real and practical as she shares the memory of her life. Her stories are relatable and this should be "must" reading for young women and for older women who want to know how to tell their own life stories in a meaningful and impactful way. Grateful for your life and your story. Grateful for your courage to speak truth and be vulnerable about some of the harsh realities of life. So glad that you read your own book and shared your amazing poetry with us. Faith, poetry, disappointment, love, reality, crushed dreams, heartbreak, mountain top experiences - thank you for sharing a full life well lived thus far in such an open and transparent way. You healed souls with this one!

Creative and inspiring

Amena Brown wowed me with her personal insight, vulnerability, and creative word and rhythm use.

I loved this book.

Amena Brown blends her poetry, experiences, thoughts and life lessons into a perfect metaphoric crescendo in this book. I loved her transparency and honesty. I was challenged and inspired. I cried a little and laughed a lot. This book was my introduction to Amena's work, but I am now a lifelong fan. Thank you, sister, for reminding me that God doesn't need me to diminish who he created me to be in order for Him to shine!

Great storytelling

I loved listening to Amena narrate her own story/stories. She shares candidly and with a beautiful, relatable vulnerability.

Audiobook is a great choice here

I have seen Amena Brown perform her spoken word poetry live twice I think. She mixes deep thoughts with humor and great writing. I picked up How to Fix a Broken Record on audiobook when it was on sale a few weeks ago. I moved it to the top of my list after listening to Amena Brown interview Hillary Yancey about Yancey’s book Forgiving God.

How to Fix a Broken Record is the type of young-ish Christian memoir that I really like to read every once in a while. The 30-something’s thoughts on life and love and what is really important. I get down on Christian Publishing at times, but Christian Publishing does print a number of books that are really good but do not get wide readership.

How to Fix a Broken Record is a roughly chronological spiritual memoir, early life, dating, church thoughts, career, eventual marriage, more thoughts on art and calling, miscarriage, the learning to be an adult, health issues, maturing. I am guessing, but I think I am probably about 7 to 10 years older. Some of her experiences are ones that I have lived through myself, many others are not. But they are still identifiable as common to the human condition. But like many other memoirs it is the telling and thoughts on them that matters, not the uniqueness of the experiences.

What continues to be important in my quest this year to keep 2/3 of my reading by Black or other authors of Color is that I see that experience does matter. It matters that when Brown goes on a mission trip to Africa, that she has to think about slavery and what it means to be descended from slaves. It matters that she has to think about hair differently than I do. It matters that as a woman, she experiences thoughts about pregnancy and miscarriage differently than I would.

How to Fix a Broken Record was well written. The mix of deep spiritual thoughts and life advice with lots of humor makes the whole book a pleasure. Her narration of the audiobook is excellent, but equally good in print. She has five spoken word albums and I need to check those out as well.

LOVE!

Love! Love! Love! Amena is absolutely amazing. Love her stories mixed with transparency and truth. She didn’t sugar coat her story but provided hope and encouragement. Absolutely wonderful.

Excellent words

Authentic, honest, funny, necessary. I appreciate the vulnerability in the words and the genuine way Amena connects with her audience through storytelling. Highly recommended.

Beautiful and thoughtful.

I really enjoyed this! I loved that the author read this book. It lent an awsome touch to the more personal parts of the narrative. The poetry was sooo very good.