Loved this, one of my favourite reads of 2023 amd certainly a book I will come back to over the years. I enjoyed the exploration of the Black female experience and representation. I think it's an essential read for anyone, it's educational whilst also being beautifully written.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s written by a young black woman and I’m an old white woman, so on the surface we have little in common. But that’s why I liked it. It opened my eyes to people, and places, I had no experience of. Many of the women discussed I had heard of or was at least aware of, like Diane Abbott and Hattie McDaniel, but I still learned more.

And there were many, many fascinating women I’d never heard of, and that is one of the reasons I’m grateful to Ms White. These women deserve to be more widely known. I’m researching several including Mary Fields and Mary McLeod Bethune and Wangari Maathai who was given a six month jail sentence for calling her husband incompetent during her divorce but ended up with a Nobel Peace Prize.

Ms White is an excellent writer and manages to make this complex book very readable by following her golden thread through the whole narrative. It isn’t a lecture or a polemic but a clear tribute to some astonishing black women and a great success in bringing their names into the light. It deserves to be widely read and I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn about such strong, amazing women.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley

Part history, part manifesto, Catherine Joy White's This Thread of Gold interrogates the ways Black women have been charactised and represented over the course of hundreds of years and, through telling the stories of myriad remarkable women, encourages the reader to expand their perception. For Black readers, it is an affirming celebration of all that Black women have been, are, and will be; for white readers, it is an opportunity to listen, learn and reflect on how living at the intersection of being female and being Black affects how you experience the world.

'Black women have always been appropriated, talked over, misrepresented and mistranslated,' writes White, and this book is her opportunity to tell her own story - and those of an assortment of world-renowned and less famous women who have inspired her - without interruption or contradiction. She ruminates on how each one has challenged expectations of people who look like them through 'acts of glittering defiance', whether that be quietly subverting cultural depictions of Black 'mammies', challenging the status quo as pioneers in sport, work, public office and activism. She uncovers and celebrates the fascinating stories of women who have been largely forgotten by history, such as actress Hattie McDaniel, who had to navigate a very white Hollywood in Jim Crow era America whilst simultaneously fielding criticism from the Black community.

The title 'This Thread of Gold' refers to the thread which binds Black women to each other throughout history and across continents, but it could also refer to but also to the narrative, which gathers disparate stories and experiences and, in sewing them into the tapestry that is this book, illuminates the connections and parallels between a British politician and an American trans activist, a racist charicature on a bottle of pancake syrup and the first Black Oscar winner, Beyoncé and a Second World War spy, a nineteenth century cookbook author and a pair of French intellectuals.

Although White is a self-confessed private person who finds it hard to open up, the way she shares her own experiences is raw, honest and vulnerable, and these recollections provide a framework around which to weave the stories of other women. Throughout the book, she unpicks the tropes that have limited and harmed Black women - including herself - and provides palpable evidence for the damage that characterising them as 'strong' can do for instance, such as leading to far higher rates of maternal mortality. White speaks warmly to Black women, reassuring them that 'Resilience is woven into our DNA. We wear it proudly, and yet we must not be afraid of sharing our pain.'

'What is more important than anything I can do - anything any of us can do - is that in weaving this thread of gold we are freeing other Black women to do the same. We are building a tapestry that does not force us to choose.' The thread of gold is a thread of Black excellence which blazes a trail and makes it clear that there is no one way for a Black woman to be. White believes passionately that Black women have a collective responsibility to take up that thread- to reclaim the narrative and define their femininity and their Blackness on their own terms, forcing the world to make space for them - and to do it while recognising the work of those who came before and paving the way for those who will follow. This Thread of Gold is a clarion call.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dialogue Books for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

Thank you to #Netgalley and #Dialogue books for giving me access to this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Catherine White writes compassionately and with such loving prose about black womanhood, using history and key cultural figures to redress the balance. She has chosen some incredible women to highlight her point. My favourite part was easily that of Hattie McDaniel. I only knew of her as an actress, playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind. I had no idea what an amazing, complex woman, poet, comedienne and activist she was. I shall certainly be buying a copy and look forward to more from Catherine White.

This is a short book celebrating black women's achievements, despite the obstacles they face. It's a critical history intertwined with the writer's personal experiences. there are some excellent chapters, I really enjoyed reading about Hattie McDaniels, and Diane Abbott, but other chapters have lots of ideas making them difficult to follow.
Worth reading.

We meet a lot of remarkable women here, many of whom I hadn't heard of, starting with American quilt maker Harriet Powers, a freed woman who had been born enslaved, who crucially described to the buyer of one of them the history of every block and then, ahving taught herself to read, left behind a letter describing her other work. This "thread of gold" is pulled out through the book, connecting women and their stories backwards and forward through history. White covers such a wide range of women in this inspiring book, bringing in figures such as the Kenyan eco-feminis Wangari Maathai and the French Caribbean video game designer Muriel Traumis, as well as people who are more well-known such as Michelle Obama and Hattie McDaniel. And while it calls on Black women to develop and know themselves, it does so from a position of community and support and asking women to be flexible, appreciative of themselves and their foremothers and resilient through "a thousand small steps".

We need to look after ourselves and we need to look out for each other. Not by treating our friends to champagne or gift boxes, although there is a place for that, but rather by the simple act of holding each other, lifting each other up and working to dismantle the systems of oppression that exhaust, demoralise and overexert us. We need to collectively create the conditions that allow Black people to thrive.

She finishes the book, having discussed what her grandmother and mother gave to her and what she learned from them, with a glorious list of her wishes for her daughter, again steeped in community and organisation as well as self-development. An excellent, empowering and inspiring book for everyone, and a wonderful resource for Black women in particular.

All content within this book includes all races and as a white woman, it has opened my eyes and made me more thoughtful about changes we can make. This is not a light-hearted read but is an important read.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.