She Writes Press, October 5, 2021
A Timely and Necessary Book: These Walls Between Us
“These Walls Between Us is a powerful book with an important lesson that we all must learn in trying to understand others.”
—Reverend John Reynolds, author of The Fight for Freedom:
A Memoir of My Years in the Civil Rights Movement
“A tender, honest, cringeworthy, and powerful read.”
—Debby Irving, Author of Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race
“Wendy Sanford is doing the work that only she can do!”
—Byllye Avery, Founder, Black Women's Health Imperative.
I wrote These Walls Between Us in order to reflect on, and honor, the still-evolving sixty-year connection between Mary Norman and myself, and to chronicle how we came to call each other friends. Though we are close in age, we met in my mother’s kitchen; Mary was the Black “help” and I the privileged white daughter. Years later, my work as a co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves, a widely-selling resource on women’s health and sexuality, prompted me to face my unexamined biases around class and race. These Walls Between Us offers lessons from my oft-stumbling efforts, as a white woman, to see Mary more fully and to become a more dependable friend.
Eric Hoffer Book Awards 2022: Finalist for Grand Prize and First
Horizon Award, Honorable Mention in Memoir
Chanticleer International Book Awards 2021: Short Listed for Hearten
Book Award for Uplifting and Inspirational Non-Fiction
Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition 2021: A Notable 100 Book
Best Book Awards 2021: Finalist in Multicultural Nonfiction
“Unless the white community breaks its silence and determines that race is not a peripheral issue, but an issue central to the things that we say are valuable to America . . . the finest movement in the world will not cause racism to cease.”
— Reverend James Lawson
