The first thing you notice about Sonya Renee Taylor’s book The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love is its cover. Its vibrant purple, red, and orange halo that surround a mostly-nude woman capture your eyes and draw them in. This isn’t just a woman’s body. It is the author herself, celebrating her race, her size, her femininity, her sensuality.

It’s edgy. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to handle it. I always take a photo of the book I’m reviewing and include it with the review. But how would this particular cover be received and perceived? Would it lose me readers? Would women be offended because it’s too provocative?

It IS provocative, and that’s precisely the point! It’s the cover that drew me in and made me want to read the book. Who was this woman who was so self-assured that she posed with nothing but flower petals covering her intimate parts? What does she know that I don’t know yet? What’s her story?

I am fully aware that as a white woman, I can never truly know the extent to which black women’s bodies have been treated throughout history. All women’s bodies, but especially the bodies of women of color, have been negated, hated, debated, and legislated. Women’s bodies still are idolized, criticized, moralized, demonized, and victimized. I owe it to my sisters of color to hear their stories. I owe it to them to understand that we are not the same, but that I try to see them, as much as my own perception will allow. Taylor says that “Understanding is not a prerequisite for honor, love, or respect.” I don’t have to understand everything about another woman’s experience to honor, love, and respect her, and so I follow Taylor’s advice and make peace with not understanding and I make peace with difference. And, most of all, I want to make peace with my body.  

When I saw that book cover, I recognized that here is a woman—yes, a voluptuous black woman—unapologetically allowing us to see her body. I looked at it and I saw boldness and beauty. I saw an act of radical self-love.

And so, I bought the Audible version of the book so that I could listen to it on a road trip with my friend Kathleen. In the audiobook, Taylor reads her words in her voice, and it is powerful. Even though Kathleen and I listened to the audiobook the entire drive from upstate New York to Oklahoma, we couldn’t quite finish it (less than a five-hour recording) because we kept having to pause the recording to talk about it. The book touched each of us profoundly, and we each had personal experiences to uncover and share that allowed us to explore our feelings toward our own bodies.

It’s that provocative. Taylor scatters “Unapologetic Inquiries” throughout the book that make you stop and think—and if you’re fortunate enough to be listening or reading with a friend, stop and discuss it. Her inquiries are an invitation to examine our own thoughts. Not to judge them, but to bring them into awareness. She asks: when have you apologized for your body, what assumptions do you make about differences, when have you felt shame about your body, when have you been marginalized or marginalized others, and many, many more thought-provoking questions. I wonder what it would be like if small groups of women across the planet gathered to talk about these questions openly and honestly. What power would that unleash?!

The power that is being unleashed through the book is radical self-love for bodies that are often marginalized based on race, gender or gender expression, age, size, ability, sexual orientation, and other markers. Taylor says, “Radical self-love is deeper, wider, and more expansive than anything we would call self-confidence or self-esteem. It is juicier than self-acceptance. Including the word radical offers us a self-love that is the root or origin of our relationship to ourselves.” She adds that “Using the term radical elevates the reality that our society requires a drastic political, economic, and social reformation in the ways in which we deal with bodies and body difference.”

Sonya Renee Taylor’s book won’t make you more self-confident. It won’t boost your self-esteem. It isn’t even trying to make you feel a rush of radical self-love. What it does do is to help us to awaken to “the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies.” From agreements we can make with friends to tools for reframing the negative self-talk, the book sets out gentle practices and tools that remind us of the radical self-love we all felt as infants.

I love this book, and I encourage you to get it and share it with a friend or book discussion group. Unleash the power of your own radical self-love!

Until next time,