Published in 2019
272 pages
Dani McClain is a contributing writer with The Nation and a fellow with Type Media Center. McClain’s writing has appeared in outlets including Slate, Colorlines, EBONY.com, The Rumpus and Guernica.
What is this book about?
What black mothers can teach us about raising happy, free, and fearless children.
“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun. We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.'” —Zora Neale Hurston
A longtime reporter on race, reproductive justice, policy and politics, Dani McClain is now also the mother of a baby girl. Like all first time mothers, she has countless questions about raising her child to be ethical and kind, but also to be healthy, happy, and safe in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust, even hostile society to people of color.
In Jump at the Sun, McClain interviews other mothers and experts, asking the tough, scary questions, but also celebrating the joys of motherhood and hope that children bring. Following a child’s development from infancy to toddlerhood through early childhood and the teenage years, the book touches on everything from the importance of creativity and the imagination to managing a functioning relationship with authority and the law. McClain shows that how we parent, perhaps even more importantly than how we participate in direct action and advocacy, will determine how we survive these turbulent times.
