Loving Before Loving

Joan Steinau Lester is an award-winning commentator, columnist, and author of critically acclaimed books, including Mama's Child and Black, White, Other. Her writing has appeared in such publications as USA Today, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, and Huffington Post.

This intimate, brave memoir is also one that many women will recognize as their own: a lifetime spent trying to heal others and the world, only to discover one must start with oneself."" - Robin Morgan, editor of Sisterhood Is Powerful ""This book is the real deal, the way it was. A good book for folks to grow on. I love it! Bravo!"" - Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple ""Exceptional. It is a real challenge to write a memoir that is intellectually deep, psychologically sophisticated, and politically principled that is also engaging, accessible, funny, and tender. Loving before Loving certainly is all that. What a remarkable ride."" - Becky Thompson, author of A Promise and a Way of Life ""Vividly written and profoundly moving, Joan Lester's journey-as wife, mother, activist-is politically insightful and prescient. Since her vigorous and heartfelt observations and analyses are generative and healing, this memoir is needed now when our racial conflicts, always profound, continue to intensify."" - Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt