I Call You Friend: Four Women's Stories of Race, Faith, and Friendship

I call you friend challanged me to think more deeply about how we treat others. The stroies gave me insite into some of the subtilies of discrimination which hurt others.

Elvon Reed-Borst, one of the women telling her story in this book, wrote the following in a journal she kept as a young girl. It sums up what I feel this book conveys. She wrote, "Some people go down a worn path; I will go where there is no path and I will leave a trail." Echoes of Robert Frost. Elvon, Pamela Toussaint, Jo Kadlecek and Andrea Clark have chosen the "road less travelled on..." Without melodrama, overly subjective confession or sentimentalism, each women opens a dialogue with the reader regarding issues such as: racial reconciliation, growing up in Urban America, Suburban America, the South and the North and the community of faith. The book is so engaging because of the way it is set-up. It is split into three stages of their lives, called: Coming Up, Coming of Age and Coming Together. This structure allows the reader to view each woman's story as if viewing a play in which the stage is sectioned off in fours. Each voice is distinct and individual yet their stories overlap as we watch them meet each other in various ways. Not unlike the four gospel writers (if I may be so bold in such comparison)they describe the same events from their individual viewpoints and in the process we get to know them, Christianity and the racial issue in a more intimate and well-rounded manner. We see the issues raised through female dialogue and three-dimensional story . We also understand what Christ meant when he said, "I call you friend..." because the lives of these women, their mutual admiration, honesty, passion and faith reaffirms for anyone who has ears to hear that laying down one's life in whatever form that works out to be, is simply the natural state of what true Christianity is all about. This is a must read for anyone, no matter where you stand in regard to Christianity, but more so because it re-challenges us all on the issue of racial reconciliation. What are you and I doing about it in our friendships? This book is a map showing us to the trail which Elvon, Pam, Jo and Andrea have and continue to blaze for us to follow.by Kristy Johnson

The authors are to be congratulated for being so transparent--this is the hardest topic to be honest about and their honesty really opened my heart and my mind on the issue of race. Read this book and weep and gasp and be changed.