These Walls Between Us: A Memoir of Friendship Across Race and Class

Summary

From an author of the best-selling women’s health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves comes a bracingly forthright memoir about a sixty-year friendship across racial and class divides. Sanford, who is white, explores her formation in a narrow world of privilege, lifts up the writings and social movements that changed her life, and reveals realities of domestic service rarely acknowledged by white employers. She highlights Mary Norman’s part in the Great Migration of African Americans from south to north, her groundbreaking work as the first woman officer a New Jersey county corrections system, and her guiding ethic of care. Together, they confront the obstacles – in society and in Sanford herself – to building lifelong friendship.These two complex and accomplished women will stay with you. Their story sparks conversation and change. A white woman’s necessary learning, and a Black woman’s resolute survival, make These Walls Between Us a “tender, honest, cringeworthy and powerful read.” (Debby Irving, author, Waking Up White.)

Audiobook Bonus Intro and Afterword: Co-creators Wendy Sanford and Mary Norman in Conversation.