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What Keeps Me Standing: Letters from Black Grandmothers on Peace, Hope and Inspiration

In his previous bestsellers, Think and Grow Rich and What Makes the Great Great, Dennis Kimbro revealed the success secrets of highly touted entrepreneurs, corporate climbers, and Olympic athletes, as well as famous black Americans from George Washington Carver to Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, and Jesse Jackson. In What Keeps Me Standing, he turns to another group of sages and mentors: the grandmothers who have long been the backbone of the African American family and community.

Over a period of five years, Kimbro contacted one thousand grandmothers–women from a wide range of backgrounds and locations–asking, “If you had to write a one page letter to your children or the next generation, what would you tell them about life?” Their answers, collected here, show that success in life cannot be measured in terms of wealth and material goods alone. The lives they describe and the advice they proffer capture both a richness in spirit and a strong belief in the power of every individual to take charge of his or her own destiny. In the face of racism, both blatant and subtle, financial struggles, and personal setbacks, black grandmothers have helped their communities in thousands of tangible and intangible ways, providing support, inspiration, and love not only to their own children and grandchildren but also to neighbors, friends, and extended families.

Filled with examples of how even the smallest acts of kindness and compassion can make a difference in the world, What Keeps Me Standing is a treasure trove of the wisdom that comes with years of experience, transformation, and growth. It is the perfect gift.

From the Hardcover edition.

Product Features

  • Used Book in Good Condition
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True and Constant Friends: Love and Inspiration from Our Grandmothers, Mothers, and Friends

Kelley Paul, wife of Senator Rand Paul, celebrates lifelong friendships in a beautifully illustrated book about the female bond. When Kelley Paul arrived on the Rhodes College campus in 1981, she immediately bonded with six women. Three decades of intimate friendship later, Kelley celebrates these relationships and the women who inspired them all. She tells their stories and those of their grandmothers, mothers and sisters, providing a microcosm of women raising families and building lives in 20th- and 21st-century America. The extraordinary lives of Kelley’s and her friends’ role models-from the Southern matriarch to the poor Irish immigrant-are honored in this lovely book which offers oral history along with classic poetry, art, and photography. Throughout, Kelley explores the universal themes of hardship, determination, commitment, family, independence, optimism, friendship and love-and illuminates the power of the female bond that enriches all our lives.