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Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change Kindle Edition
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Lead from the Outside is a necessary guide to harnessing the strengths of being an outsider by Stacey Abrams, one of the most prominent black female politicians in the U.S.
Leadership is hard. Convincing others—and often yourself—that you possess the answers and are capable of world-affecting change requires confidence, insight, and sheer bravado. Stacey Abrams's Lead from the Outside is the handbook for outsiders, written with the awareness of the experiences and challenges that hinder anyone who exists beyond the structure of traditional white male power—women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and millennials ready to make a difference.
In Lead from the Outside, Stacey Abrams argues that knowing your own passion is the key to success, regardless of the scale or target. From launching a company, to starting a day care center for homeless teen moms, to running a successful political campaign, finding what you want to fight for is as critical as knowing how to turn thought into action. Stacey uses her experience and hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, while offering personal stories that illuminate practical strategies.
Stacey includes exercises to help you hone your skills and realize your aspirations. She discusses candidly what she has learned over the course of her impressive career: that differences in race, gender, and class are surmountable. With direction and dedication, being in the minority actually provides unique and vital strength, which we can employ to rise to the top and make real change.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHenry Holt and Co.
- Publication dateApril 24, 2018
- File size5258 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
PRAISE FOR LEAD FROM THE OUTSIDE
(Previously published as MINORITY LEADER)
"Like Lean In for people who didn’t start with any power." ―Rebecca Traister, New York Magazine
"Abrams's own grit, coupled with her descriptions of much stumbling and self-doubt, will make Minority Leader touch you in a way few books by politicians can. In fact, the last one to manage it―biracial, the child of divorce, raised with little money by a single mother―became our 44th president." ―The New York Times Book Review
"Stacey Abrams writes about her personal cocktail of grit and gumption." ―Glamour
“Stacey didn’t write Minority Leader simply to help people in the minority; she wrote it because she believes people in the minority can help us all.” ―Teen Vogue
“Stacey Abrams has everything you want in a candidate: a good legal mind, experience in governance, and a deep knowledge of poverty and hard work. If you read Minority Leader, you will discover she also has the superpowers of inspiring trust and knowing how to organize. You will have her as a friend, and you will want her as a governor.” ―Gloria Steinem
“Minority Leader is a special book with a special mission: to push ALL people to know that their greatness and worthiness is a birthright. Stacey’s story is not just uplifting, but instructional as well. I am part of a long line of people who have admired Stacey for a long time. Read this book, and you will understand why.” ―Wes Moore, bestselling author of The Other Wes Moore and The Work, CEO, Robin Hood
“Stacey Abrams displays competence, confidence, and compassion in her assessment of the attributes and actions needed to deliver impact in today’s complicated world. Her commentary is as real as her commitment is remarkable. Minority Leader is both a motivational and a mechanical manual, offering an intense focus on opportunities and an unyielding path to mitigate obstacles. I enthusiastically commend this book as a resource for those who want to grow personally and professionally, as well as for those who seek to help guide that same growth.” ―Lisa M. Borders, WNBA President
"Stacey understands what it is like to try and balance the everyday obligations of work and family, and Minority Leader offers a practical guide to pursuing meaningful work while acknowledging the myths of 'juggling it all.' All kinds of people face these challenges, but it can be more acute for women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and others with 'outsider' status. This book is for anyone who has faced challenges while pursuing their passion, and helps people who are left out of traditional ladders to success build one for themselves." ―Sherilyn Wright, Assistant to the International President, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
"Here, [Stacey Abrams] shows readers from any marginalized population how to become their own advocates, proactively using their otherness while recognizing their fears. Not just local appeal; there are audiences out there that could really, really benefit from this book." ―Library Journal
"Although there are many books on networking and achieving political and entrepreneurial success, Abrams' is geared toward helping those who are on the fringes, especially African American women, find pathways to success and power...this is an excellent guide that addresses setbacks and pitfalls and identifies strategies to overcome them." ―Booklist
PRAISE FOR STACEY ABRAMS
"In a time when too many folks are focused simply on how to win an election, Stacey’s somebody who cares about something more important: why we should. That’s the kind of politics we should practice. That’s why I’m proud to give Stacey Abrams my support." ―President Barack Obama
“[Stacey Abrams will] serve the underserved of the state of Georgia.” ―Oprah
"[Abrams] is a phenomenal candidate and person and she can make history by becoming the first ever Black Woman elected Governor in America.” ―Common
“Stacey Abrams is a bold leader who . . . understands hard work and is committed to finding solutions for the families who come home after a long day of work struggling to get by.” ―Vice President Joe Biden
"Stacey Abrams' experience, vision, and proven track record of building consensus across party lines are beyond compare." ―President Jimmy Carter
“Stacey Abrams is [a] leader with integrity and a commitment to fairness for all.” ―Dan Cantor, National Chair of the Working Families Party
“Stacey. . . .sees racial justice, economic justice, climate justice, and social justice as complementary―not contradictory. . . .her vision is the type of future we should be envisioning nationwide.” ―Ilya Sheyman, Executive Director of MoveOn.org Political Action
“Stacey has proven herself to be an absolute tour-de-force in a state that has never before elected a woman or person of color as governor. . . .Stacey Abrams has always been a trailblazer.” ―Stephanie Schriock, President of EMILY’s List
“Stacey Abrams is a deeply compassionate and thoughtful leader who is always committed to fighting for justice for the Georgians she serves...Throughout her career, I have watched her work tirelessly to build coalitions to protect the poor and middle class, fight voter suppression, and register hundreds of thousands of people to vote. Stacey Abrams is the only leader in the race who has the experience and an ambitious vision to uplift all families in our state. Georgia must seize the opportunity to be a model for our nation by electing this transformative leader, who strives to empower the people she will serve.” ―Congressman John Lewis
“Leaders like Stacey are the ones saying yes. America is changing, but there is no reason to fear the future.” ―Jason Kander, former Missouri Secretary of State and President of Let America Vote
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Minority Leader
How to Lead From the Outside and Make Real Change
By Stacey AbramsHenry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2018 Stacey AbramsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-19129-8
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgments,
Epigraph,
Introduction,
One Dare to Want More,
Two Fear and Otherness,
Three Hacking and Owning Opportunity,
Four The Myth of Mentors,
Five Money Matters,
Six Prepare to Win and Embrace the Fail,
Seven Making What You Have Work,
Eight Work-Life Jenga,
Nine Taking Power,
Index,
About the Author,
Copyright,
CHAPTER 1
DARE TO WANT MORE
I sit in the living room, a cozy space, warm in the early summer. I am perched on the edge of the sofa next to Valerie, the home's owner, a lovely black woman in her late forties. Across from us, seated close together on a wide settee meant for one, are her two children, a son and a daughter.
Politicians rarely visit their streets, which are nestled in a poorer community in south Georgia. Valerie beams with pride that both her children are headed to college in the fall. David, seventeen, plans to study criminology. Maya, eighteen, her belly round with her first child, intends to become a middle school teacher. Both newly graduated from high school, Maya will give birth in mere weeks and begin college months later, an unwed teen mother. Her intended school is more than three hours north of her home, so her mother will raise her newborn baby while she starts her freshman year.
Valerie speaks matter-of-factly about the coming challenge: raising a new child just as hers leave the nest. Still, she is determined that both her children pursue degrees she never received. Maya, the mother-to-be, wonders aloud how she'll do so far away from home and her baby. Yet in the next breath, she explains how college will be best for her and her child. Their future success rests upon her.
I've come to their home as part of my campaign for governor, so I ask Valerie what she expects of someone like me. What can I do to help make lives like hers better? In her soft voice, she replies she just wants better options for financial aid for her children. They will succeed, she says, if they can afford to stay in school.
As I look around the modest home, passed down through generations, I understand both the pride and the desperation tangled in her response. She got them through and has given them the tools to carve out better lives for themselves. We chat more about the worries she's lived with all those years, our discussion turning to the crime and poverty in their community.
Then I ask Valerie what she wants. At first, all I get in response is a quizzical look that suggests I need to reconsider my bid for higher office. I repeat, "What do you want? For you? What secret dream do you have for yourself?" Her confused expression turns to one of surprise. "I don't know," she tells me. "I've been a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly for twenty years."
"You must want something," I probe, "something you'd like to do for you."
"A day care," she admits quietly. "I'd like to start a day care for unwed mothers, like my daughter. So more girls can finish school and pursue their dreams." But that ambition is beyond her — her body language, her tone of voice, her averted gaze speak louder than her words. I press her, but she demurs with a smile. "Let's just see what happens if you win the governor's job."
Valerie's house in south Georgia is not too different from the squat redbrick house where I grew up on South Street in Gulfport, Mississippi. An oak tree grew in our front yard, shadowing the front sidewalk, forbidding grass to grow beneath its shade. Pink azaleas bloomed each spring from bushes that flanked the front door. Our rented house, and the others set close by, teemed with children — all black, all working-class. We played in our postage-stamp yards, make-believing the fantastical. Superhero exploits. Cops and robbers. As we got older, we'd talk about moving to New Orleans or living in one of the mansions along the beachfront that lay less than five miles away, across the railroad tracks that ran in between our neighborhood and the wealthier environs. We dreamed of more, while our parents' lives centered around survival and making it from paycheck to paycheck. Instinctively, we understood that more had to be possible, even if we didn't know what to do to get there. These imaginings — these desires — are the root of ambition.
As adults, like Valerie, we tend to edit our desires until they fit our construction of who we're supposed to become. In such a world, I wouldn't dare dream of running for higher office, for mayor or governor or president. At least for now, Valerie sees herself retiring in twenty more years from the Piggly Wiggly as a cashier, rather than as a small business owner who helps a community raise its children. From our brief meeting, I could see she had the fire, albeit at a low burn, of a minority leader. She had ambition. She had a vision. But she didn't have the faith. And understandably so.
Whether we come from working-class neighborhoods or grow up comfortably middleclass, minorities rarely come of age explicitly thinking about what we want and how to get it. People already in power almost never have to think about whether they belong in the room, much less if they would be listened to once inside. These men — and they are usually men and typically white — do not have to grapple with low expectations based on gender or race or class. Ambition for them begins with reminiscences of old times and older friendships or newer alliances. The ends have already been decided, with only the means to be discussed.
* * *
Most potential minority leaders feel the same lack of faith Valerie had, at least at some point in their evolution. We may not know how to get the first job, let alone make it to the big chair. We don't know how to take the leap from accepting our fates to actually changing them, and not just a little, but radically. Then there are those who simply do not know what they want. The drive to achieve burns inside, often without a clear target.
We want to "be something," but what that is remains hazy. Often, we cannot articulate our goals because they lie just beyond the reach of who we are supposed to be. Ambition's scale is irrelevant. What holds us back is not scope. It's fear.
And because we don't know what to call our dreams, don't know how to make them happen, or are pretty sure we'll be disappointed, we just stand still. But becoming a minority leader demands that we embrace ambition as our due.
In every sector where I've worked, I am driven by my ambition to encourage others to find their own dreams and exploit their potential. Whether I'm mentoring young people in organizations or speaking with those looking to forge new careers at midlife to explore their potential, the starting block is knowing what you want — and then wanting more. Run for office, take the helm at corporate boards, go back to college, or start a small business. Whatever the path, this book is designed to help locate our ambition and use it to create a path to leadership that does not bow to inner doubts or outside prejudices.
GETTING LOST IN POSSIBILITIES
During law school, one of my tax professors, Anne Alstott, hired me as a research assistant for a book she was coauthoring. As I combed through the reams of documents, I struggled to organize them into coherent and useful information. I tried to categorize by theme, by type, even by the size of the page, legal or standard. Lost in the sheer enormity of the project, I couldn't determine what was real and relevant versus what were merely interesting facts on a page.
When I presented my initial findings to Professor Alstott, she listened thoughtfully, asking the occasional question. At the end, she motioned me over to the whiteboard in her overstuffed office filled with books and monographs, and she told me the secret of how she approached research. Finding the truth requires three simple questions, she explained, and they must be answered in any investigation: (1) What is the problem? (2) Why is it a problem? (3) How do you solve it?
Finding, owning, and living one's ambition can feel a lot like that research project. In a world filled with options, we are paralyzed by choices. Or, worse, in so many cases, when we've been told our options are limited, we need to have the wherewithal to find our way to more. Rather than seeking outside expertise on whether we deserve what we want, we must look inward, not simply at our fears — of losing, of not being sufficient — but at the great difference living our ambitions can make if we succeed.
When we win, we achieve beyond ourselves. We become models for others, known and unknown, who see our victories as proof that they can win too. Even by simply embracing ambition, talking about it, trying and failing, we mentor others to see their potential. And by going beyond our own limits, we change the places we inhabit. We bring a fresh perspective to a company or a cause, a minority lens that expands and shifts how the work gets done. This is not news. Think of the companies scrambling to add women to their executive offices, people of color to their boards of directors. Or the nonprofit that adapts its mission because of the unique understanding it gains from incorporating the experience of those who have been outside.
When I work with young people and others seeking leadership positions, they are primed to jump to the third question, to the how of it, without understanding the what or the why. Some pick a place they want to land or a title they like and then expect teleportation. It may sound corny, but so many of us forget that finding and fulfilling ambition is truly a journey, and one that does not come with a map or GPS, especially for those of us on the outside looking to get in. The effort can be sweaty, teary, and messy as much as it can be rewarding and empowering. I call it the hard work of becoming more.
So what takes us beyond the dream to charting a new reality? What I've come to think of as Alstott's Queries, framed slightly differently, have become a cornerstone of how I frame almost every endeavor. Whether the dream is to run a company, run for office, or run a 5K — or even if your dream has not yet been discovered — the path to realizing ambition is the same:
1. What do I want?
2. Why do I want it?
3. How do I get there?
Before exploring these steps, it's crucial to understand and internalize our very right to even be ambitious. Because, for too many of us, we are stopped in our tracks before we begin because we don't believe we deserve to want more. And it is by wanting more that we begin.
I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I
Early on, I had two experiences that helped me understand how to convert imaginings into ambition and realize that "too big" isn't a good reason not to try. The first occurred at the end of my junior year of high school. My public high school required all juniors to take the PSAT. Despite not having the tutors like some of my school friends, I'm a pretty good test taker and did well. My scores prompted an invitation to apply for a program I'd never heard of before — nor had any of my teachers. Still, I completed the extensive application for the Telluride Foundation because it promised a summer program away from home, and I thought it would be exciting to go to the north. I applied, and they selected me to attend TASP, which stands for Telluride Association Summer Program, a nerd summer camp for high achievers. I took the second plane ride of my life to Ithaca, New York, where I lived with fifteen of the smartest teenagers I'd ever met. For the first few days, I studiously avoided conversation, baffled by how I had been chosen to join them.
To a person, I could not compete. I wrote poetry for our high school journal. A girl there had published a collection. One was a concert-level violinist, and the others sounded like college professors. In our classroom sessions, I was called upon to answer questions, and I got more answers wrong than I ever had at Avondale High School. The other students referenced books I'd never read and scholars I hadn't heard of. Even casual conversation left me adrift, floundering to understand cultural references far beyond me. When I dared to introduce television into the mix, you'd have thought I cussed.
At the end of the first week, I called home, begging my parents to let me leave. I was out of my depth among these brainiacs, embarrassing myself every day. My parents, cruelly it seemed, refused. They demanded that I stay and learn as much as I could from the experience. My dad told me to get comfortable with not being anywhere near the smartest person in the room. I had to accept that I simply did not have the background or education the others did, and it was up to me to decide if that mattered.
The comment stung, but he was right. I had always been smart, but I needed to test myself against those who were smarter, more talented, and more accomplished. My ability to dream meant hearing about, and entering, worlds far different from my own. Athletes are encouraged to test themselves against better players. Proverbs tells us that iron sharpens iron. So too does ambition sharpen ambition. Dreams hone other dreams.
I stayed for the full summer, never once proving myself superior to anyone. Six weeks could not erase the difference in upbringing and access. But I learned from them, in our classes and beyond. I learned to mimic their sense of self-confidence and certainty. I didn't lie about what I knew, but I began to carry myself differently and speak with more authority.
Not everyone's ambitions will be world domination or Carnegie Hall, but we should be driven beyond what we know and feel safe doing. Ambition means pushing past simply what we are good at. The goal is to stretch ourselves, to explore our potential, even when we know we won't be first or the best. I sometimes advise people to watch what they fear, what makes them most nervous or feel the most self-protective — sometimes fear masks ambition. And unmasking it can unleash your drive.
* * *
Telluride introduced me to a world larger than my own, and then came Spelman College. A historically black college with a student body composed of 99 percent African American women, missionaries founded Spelman to help freed slave women embrace their liberty. Spelman operates as a four-year course on deprogramming black women stereotypes — the welfare queen, the hypersexualized Jezebel, being the lowest rung of the minority hierarchy — replaced by a parade of chief executive officers, public intellectuals, scientists, artists, and actors.
My mother tricked me into attending Spelman. A lifelong Southerner, I'd planned my escape by applying only to schools north of the Mason-Dixon Line. I had no interest in a women's college — a black one at that. Most of my classmates since kindergarten had been white students. Plus, as I hadn't been allowed to date until I was sixteen, the idea of a cloistered college experience held no appeal. But Mom guilted me into applying, reminding me that she hadn't had the opportunity to attend due to her family's poverty. When I was admitted, she convinced me to take advantage of a day off from school to visit. I found myself astonished by the incredible diversity of a black women's college, a stone's throw away from a black men's college, Morehouse College. In the end, my visit persuaded me to add Spelman to the list of colleges I might attend. I put the names into a cup: Spelman, Swarthmore, Sarah Lawrence, and Vassar. Spelman came out three times, and I sent in my acceptance.
At Spelman, I had the second experience that moved me closer to knowing what I wanted for my future. Suddenly, I found myself seeing how much blacks could achieve, beyond the handful of television shows I'd watched. My new classmates were the daughters of politicians and famous lawyers and corporate leaders. One of my closest friends mentioned in passing that she had the U.S. surgeon general's home number. While several of us came from more modest means, our college expected us to dream beyond our narrow understanding of what we could be. I threw myself into college life, hungry to become this new superwoman: the Breaker of Stereotypes, Destroyer of Black Woman Myths. I was now in a context that included people of color, women no less, who had confidence that they could succeed.
I learned at Telluride and Spelman that I was allowed to craft my future. Those experiences had quelled some of my self-doubt; but even then, I pretended to be more fearless than I felt. I tried out for the spring play, despite my personal worries that I wasn't as sylphlike as my castmates. I ran for vice president of the Student Government Association as a sophomore, clearly lacking the years of experience my predecessors and my opponent had. I persevered and won, despite my shortcomings and despite my own inner doubts, which I managed to keep at bay, though just barely.
This is where Alstott's Queries, the what, why, and how, become most critical. Once we accept that we deserve to want more and we understand how giving birth to ambition requires knowing ourselves better, we're ready to actually start figuring out what lights us up and then plotting out our pathways to get it.
(Continues...)Excerpted from Minority Leader by Stacey Abrams. Copyright © 2018 Stacey Abrams. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- ASIN : B0763SXC4V
- Publisher : Henry Holt and Co. (April 24, 2018)
- Publication date : April 24, 2018
- Language : English
- File size : 5258 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 238 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 1250191297
- Best Sellers Rank: #365,873 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #275 in Discrimination & Racism Studies
- #1,096 in Business Leadership
- #1,346 in Business Professional's Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Stacey Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Democratic Leader. In 2018, Abrams became the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, winning more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. Abrams was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States, and she was the first black woman and first Georgian to deliver a Response to the State of the Union.
In the wake of the 2018 election, Abrams launched Fair Fight Action and Fair Fight 2020 to defend voting rights. She also launched Fair Count to ensure accuracy in the 2020 Census and greater participation in civic engagement, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project, a public policy initiative to broaden economic power and build equity in the South. She previously founded the New Georgia Project, which has helped register hundreds of thousands of Georgians.
Abrams is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where she serves on the Subcommittee on Diversity. She has been a featured speaker at the Aspen Ministers Forum, the Kerry Initiative-Yale Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, the National Security Action Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a contributor to Foreign Affairs Magazine.
She is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award and a current member of the Board of Directors for the Center for American Progress and Priorities USA. Abrams has also written eight romantic suspense novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery, in addition to Lead from the Outside, formerly Minority Leader, a guidebook on making real change in the civic sector, politics or the private sector.
Abrams is an avid fan of television and movies, with a penchant for sci-fi, car chases and heists. A bibliophile, her recent favorites range from Colson Whitehead, Robert Caro and Nora Roberts to N.K. Jemison, Rebecca Roanhorse and Haruki Marukami.
Abrams received degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and Yale Law School. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she and her five siblings grew up Mississippi and Georgia.
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I wasn't too impressed with the intro, but something told me to keep going...So thankful I did. I had to "return" the book to the library before I was finished reading it, so I only made it up to chapter 5, but from what I read, it spoke to every part of me. All of the questions I've been struggling with as a black woman about self worth in the work place, networking, mentors, student loan repayments...She covered it all. My review can't do the book justice, but I will say, whether I had finished reading the book in the library or not, I knew I needed to purchase it, because this book is highlighter worthy!
I bought a copy for my sister who has a new leadership position, and will be sharing my copy with my mother and others, but I'm going to want it back so I can mark it up and save the pages I need to re-read to light a fire under my goals. Someday I'll be voting for this woman for president.
Yes, Abrams is a politically ambitious Black woman. The horror! "Minority fears have distinct branches that get tangled up: stereotypes intermingle with authenticity and achievement. Will I get a shot because of who I am? If I fail, do I bring down everyone who looks like me? If I’m too successful, will my people celebrate me or shun me? How do I integrate into the world where I am an outsider, yet not move too far away from the places that make me who I am?"
She states the problems, clearly, but also gives the answers. "I confronted the expected stereotypes by knowing what they were and building an alternate narrative about myself."
The insights she presents apply to Black women, but also, to women of every color, to men of color, to non-binary and to LGBTQ people. To all those who are outsiders, in some way, whether in politics or other careers.
"We are, by our natures, often required to manufacture our own breaks, identify new openings even before others know they exist. The best hack is to know this is the case, accept it, and move on, prepared to take full advantage. And then do it all over again."
Although she ended up prevented from claiming the Georgia Governorship, the very act of her running for it made a difference. "...one of the aspects of holding power is understanding the long game—that battles add up over time and create space for others to feel emboldened to act."
If you are NOT a cisgender, straight, white, middle class+ man, you will get a lot out of this book. You might get a lot out of it even if you are.
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2020
Yes, Abrams is a politically ambitious Black woman. The horror! "Minority fears have distinct branches that get tangled up: stereotypes intermingle with authenticity and achievement. Will I get a shot because of who I am? If I fail, do I bring down everyone who looks like me? If I’m too successful, will my people celebrate me or shun me? How do I integrate into the world where I am an outsider, yet not move too far away from the places that make me who I am?"
She states the problems, clearly, but also gives the answers. "I confronted the expected stereotypes by knowing what they were and building an alternate narrative about myself."
The insights she presents apply to Black women, but also, to women of every color, to men of color, to non-binary and to LGBTQ people. To all those who are outsiders, in some way, whether in politics or other careers.
"We are, by our natures, often required to manufacture our own breaks, identify new openings even before others know they exist. The best hack is to know this is the case, accept it, and move on, prepared to take full advantage. And then do it all over again."
Although she ended up prevented from claiming the Georgia Governorship, the very act of her running for it made a difference. "...one of the aspects of holding power is understanding the long game—that battles add up over time and create space for others to feel emboldened to act."
If you are NOT a cisgender, straight, white, middle class+ man, you will get a lot out of this book. You might get a lot out of it even if you are.












