Dear White Woman, Please Come Home is Kimberlee Yolanda Williams' invitation to white women longing for authentic friendship with Black and brown women, the kind of friendship with no place for secrets, the kind of relationship where truth-telling is welcome, even when it hurts.
The idea for the book was born after attending a workshop that left her shaken and angry. In it, Kimberlee listened as white woman after white woman expressed shock, saying, I didn't know, meaning they didn't understand how this or that comment, custom, behavior, or norm so negatively impacted women of color. How could they not know? she wondered skeptically. Were they lying? Eventually she had an epiphany: How could white women know what we (Black and brown women) go through if we don't tell them? We've been trained not to tell them. In an attempt to break that cycle, Kimberlee began writing letters about her experiences.
In the resulting book - 40 letters to a fictional "missing" white sister - she explores with vulnerability, sorrow, rage, and humor how white women, often despite best intentions, signal to her and other women of color to proceed with caution when in their presence. Based on real events, each letter serves as testimony to the daily insults and avoidances that otherize, invisiblize, and undermine Black and brown women. The letters' story arc, combined with end-of-chapter questions for deep reflection, offer white women insight to the damage done as well as to what it takes to "come home," to be trusted. The question throughout the book lingers until the very last letter: Will Kimberlee find her long lost "sister"? Will she want to "come home"? Be ready to "come home"?
The book, Kimberlee's prescription for the historical ailment that continues to divide white women and women of color, also serves as an affirmation for Black and brown women. Historically, women of color's role has been to serve, comfort, protect, coddle, nourish, and elevate white women. Kimberlee's raw storytelling boldly disrupts that pattern, hopefully offering an opening for other women of color to air their own painful truths.
Ideal for study groups, Dear White Women, Please Come Home offers a tool for white women and women of color courageous enough to take on a relationship we were designed not to pursue.
Foreword by Debby Irving, racial justice educator and writer, author of New York Times best seller, Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race.
Hailing from the nation's capital with huge hair, a million watt smile, and contagious laughter, Kimberlee Yolanda Williams feels like the best friend you didn't know you had. In her work as an educator, DEI administrator, workshop leader, public speaker, coach, consultant, and author, Kimberlee brings a mix of authenticity and raw truth. She is known for finding humor and challenge at just the right moments, and like the best of coaches, leaning in and pushing audiences to push themselves. Kimberlee lives in Seattle with her partner where they refuel by reading and relaxing near any body of water. Dear White Woman, Please Come Home is Kimberlee's attempt to share with readers what her clients, workshop attendees, and audience members have felt for years. Kimberlee received a B.A. in Foreign Language Education from the University of Maryland (go Terps!), as well as an M.S. in education from Dominican University. She currently lives in Seattle with her partner where they refuel by being in community (with other folks of color), reading and reading some more, and relaxing near any body of water. In addition to all of the above, Kimberlee is a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, a cousin, an aunt, a niece, a dancer, an avid learner of languages (five to date), a free spirit, and an empath.
Debby Irving brings to racial justice the perspective of working in non-profit organizations and education for 25 years before understanding racism as systemic or her own whiteness as an obstacle to grappling with it. Despite attending diversity workshops and even heading a diversity committee during these years, she struggled to make sense of racial dynamics she could feel but not explain. At the age of 48, a Wheelock College graduate school course titled Racial and Cultural Identities finally gave her the answers she'd been looking for, launching her on a journey of discovery. Debby now devotes herself to working with people exploring the impact whiteness can have on perception, problem solving, system design, culture shifting, creating racially diverse work teams and communities, and individual and collective human development. Her New York Times bestseller, Waking Up White, tells the story of how she went from well-meaning to well-doing. Her book, workshops, keynotes, community dialogs, TED Talk, online videos, blog, and frequent media commentary have become staples in the national discourse on the role of good white people in perpetuating racism. A graduate of the Winsor School in Boston, she holds a BA in History from Kenyon College and an MBA from Simmons College.
