Bon Courage

Essays

Bon Courage is a fierce, moving, eclectic and intimate collection—wide ranging and inclusive in the essay mode, deep and revealing as a memoir, with the dynamics and layering of great fiction. As if that’s not enough, it sings. Ru Freeman participates intimately while bringing global perspectives to subjects as diverse as Bowie and Dylan, Palestine, 9/11, hairstyles, personal and cultural identity, and #MeToo. This is a resplendent and compendious exploration of great empathy, insight, and bon courage indeed. This is a book that is going to make a difference.

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Praise & Reviews

“Ru Freeman’s Bon Courage is a powerful and challenging portrait of an artist and activist; it is both a memoir and manifesto, confession and call-to-action, and in it there is both heaven and hell. I have known and watched Ru for many years with awe–we have few of her kind in the literary world. A truth-teller, a true fighter, a loving creator, we only have a few that stand for something and not sit for everything. Not only will this book inspire so many of us fellow leftist brown women, but it may also teach a white world–perhaps of different convictions even than ours–who we really are, and how/why to uplift and amplify those who have yet to inherit these deeply important and often erased causes. I feel in deep gratitude to this text–I was moved throughout and it reminded me of who I am and what I still need to do!”
—Porochista Khakpour, author most recently of Brown Album: Essays on Exile & Identity