Good God, YES—today is the day: Denene Millner Books, my new children’s book imprint with Agate Publishing, is official! My imprint’s debut book, My Brown Baby: On the Joys and Challenges of Raising African American Children, officially hits bookstores today.
I couldn’t be more excited about this new road in my journey as a writer and editor. If you’ve been rocking with me here at MyBrownBaby, you know that I’ve got a thing for shoes, bacon, Black art, Black books and babies—especially babies and the people who love them. It’s why, shortly after I left my job as an editor for Parenting magazine, I started MyBrownBaby.com, a parenting site meant to create a space for thought-provoking, insightful, funny commentary on the intersection of parenting and race. I did this because I saw a need. And you all honored my work and passion by reading, commenting, sharing and raising your voices on the issues that matter to us—parents raising beautiful brown babies.
Now comes My Brown Baby: On the Joys and Challenges of Raising African American Children. After publishing almost 2,000 posts aimed at lifting the voices of moms and dads of color, I’ve curated this first-ever print collection of MyBrownBaby.com’s most important essays. Among the pieces culled for this collection:
- Birthing While Black: navigating the oft-racist terrain of hospitals
- Nipples and Ninny: overcoming resistance to breastfeeding black moms
- The Attack Against Black Girl Beauty: boosting the self-esteem of black girls in a pop cultural world obsessed with the “other”
- Young, Gifted, and Black: what it takes to raise smart, black children within the school-to-prison pipeline
- Why White Parents Should Teach Their Children About Race
- Black Boy Swagger, Black Mom Fear: the talk every parent of a black boy must have about stereotypes, racism, and facing off against the criminal justice system.
My Brown Baby is a one-of-a-kind parenting book for us, by us—for the love of our beautiful babies.
And I’m so proud, y’all. So proud. Never, ever when I started MyBrownBaby on Blogspot back in 2008 during Barack Obama’s first run for presidential office did I envision that one day I’d write a black parenting book based on work I’ve penned on the beautiful struggle that is being a black mother to black children. But here we are. Won’t He do it?
I promise you, My Brown Baby, On the Joys and Challenges of Raising African American Children is a rare jewel—one of only a handful of black parenting books in the market, and certainly, in its form, one of the rare, heartfelt, deeply personal books about motherhood, pop culture, politics, race and the beauty of us.
Buy. This. Book. For you. For me. Fo our babies. For the love of MyBrownBaby.
Purchase the book online here or here, or wherever books are sold. You don’t see it on the shelves? Ask for it. The only way bookstores will stock it is if they know there is a demand.
And when you do read it, please consider posting a review on Amazon and GoodReads. Something as simple as, “I loved it!” from a verified purchaser raises the status of the book, and primes it for bestseller status.
How dope would it be for a book about black parenting to slay the best seller’s list?
How dope would it be for My Brown Baby: On the Joys and Challenges of Raising African American Children to be on the best seller’s list?
Dope, yo. Incredibly dope.
Let’s go!
Denene Millner
Mom. NY Times bestselling author. Pop culture ninja. Unapologetic lover of shoes, bacon and babies. Nice with the verbs. Founder of the top black parenting website, MyBrownBaby.
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