From a leading new voice on race and justice, an eye-opening account of what it’s like to grow up black, Christian, and female in white America, in this idea-driven memoir about how her determined quest for identity and understanding shows a way forward for us all.

Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with a racialised America came at age 7, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools, organisations, and churches, Austin writes, I had to learn what it means to love blackness, a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America’s racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert who helps organisations practice genuine inclusion.

In a time when nearly all institutions (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claim to value diversity in their mission statements, I’m Still Here is a powerful account of how and why our actions so often fall short of our words. Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice, in stories that bear witness to the complexity of America’s social fabric–from Black Cleveland neighbourhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organisations.

For readers who have engaged with America’s legacy on race through the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Eric Dyson, I’m Still Here is an illuminating look at how white, middle-class, Evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognise God’s ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness - if we let it - can save us all.