The Love You Save: A Memoir

Acclaimed journalist and human rights activist Goldie Taylorshares the harrowing yet deeply hopeful story of her troubled childhood in East St. Louis—a memoir of family, faith and the power of books

At age eleven, Goldie Taylor is out riding her bike when she is raped by a young man from the neighborhood. Unable to cope, her mother sends her to live with her aunt in East St. Louis.

Aunt Gerald takes in anyone who asks, but the conditions are harsh. Goldie sleeps on the living room floor, amid cousins who abuse her. But in her trauma and pain, Goldie discovers a secret. She can find kinship among writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. She can find hope in a nurturing teacher who helps her find her voice. And books, she realizes, can save her life. 

Goldie Taylor's debut memoir shines a light on the strictures of race, class and gender in a post–Jim Crow America while offering a nuanced, empathetic portrait of a family in a pitched battle for its very soul.

Profoundly moving, exquisitely rendered and ultimately uplifting, The Love You Save is a story about hidden strength, perseverance against unimaginable odds, the beauty and pain of girlhood, and the power of the written word.