Fortune , livre ebook

Endorsements
“In this powerful and necessary book, Harper does something truly unique. By telling the story of her own family, she tells the story of America through a deeply Christian lens. As truthful as it is hopeful, this beautifully written book about resistance, healing, memory, place, history, justice, and identity shows how we are all still shaped by the stories we tell. This is a story that will stay with you.”
— Sarah Bessey , editor of New York Times bestseller A Rhythm of Prayer ; author of Miracles and Other Reasonable Things
“ Fortune is an arresting, moving, and altogether remarkable book. The author—one of the most influential faith leaders in America and around the globe—deftly combines her own story with a broader narrative of race, theology, and our country’s tragic history. This book is a triumph! It should be read in living rooms, classrooms, and anywhere else where people seek passion, purpose, and truth.”
— Joshua DuBois , White House faith-based advisor to President Barack Obama; bestselling author of The President’s Devotional
“Harper gives us a glimpse of her family’s survival, resistance, and resilience through her bold storytelling. In this epic narrative, she reminds us that our stories aren’t entirely lost to racial injustice. We can reclaim the richness and brilliance of our stories, our people, and our faith. Fortune will have your attention on every page and provoke each of us to explore our family history and discover redemptive visions for ourselves and our family lineage.”
— Latasha Morrison, New York Times and ECPA bestselling author of Be the Bridge ; president and founder of Be the Bridge
“Harper is one of the most influential leaders in the US and across the globe. This is her most important book yet. She unifies her own family history with her insightful theology. She names the sinful, demonic force of racism, but she also casts a vision for how we can heal our wounds from it. Pure fire from beginning to end.”
— Shane Claiborne , author, activist, and cofounder of Red Letter Christians
“A beautiful book of great spiritual and emotional depth. Through a mix of memoir and historical excavation, Harper conducts a unique, courageous exploration of America’s original sin and its terrible toll on the physical, spiritual, and psychic existence of Black Americans through the struggles of her ancestors. This book will touch your soul.”
— Obery M. Hendricks Jr . , visiting scholar, Columbia University; author of Christians against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith
“In Fortune , Harper helps us imagine how the sterile print of America’s first race laws impacted living, breathing people. Particularly in chapter one, her analysis of the life of Fortune Game Magee and her descendants helps us consider how these laws and the constructs of race that they built shaped the course of our nation. You may not agree with everything, but you must consider this work.”
— Paul Heinegg , author of Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware and Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia , and South Carolina
“Harper is one of our generation’s most important wisdom teachers. Fortune is a compelling invitation to receive the story that has shaped a nation through the story of her family. It makes clear how the stakes in our public conversations about race and justice are both deeply personal and universal: they touch us in the most intimate spaces of our lives.”
— Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove , author of Revolution of Values and Reconstructing the Gospel
“Harper is a gifted storyteller and one of the voices we need to listen to for America’s future. In telling the story of her ancestors and her personal story, she shows us a deeper way of understanding our nation’s difficult past and offers a way forward toward its diverse and equitable future.”
— Rev. Jim Wallis , founding director, Georgetown University Center on Faith and Justice; founder and ambassador of Sojourners
“ Fortune is a brave and brilliant meditation on the shameful legacy of racial injustice in America. This is a seamless narrative brimming with historical reflection, family lore, and spiritual healing. Highly recommended!”
— Douglas Brinkley , professor, Rice University; author of Rosa Parks: A Life
“With skill and love, Harper weaves together nothing less than an epic and true story of race, religion, history, and identity. A small number of books convey such soulfulness and richness with every word, and this is one of them. Fortune recovers the story not just of a single lineage but of whole eras, people groups, and nation-shaping events, and it reads like both memoir and exposé. It rewards the reader with insights and emotion on every page.”
— Jemar Tisby, New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism
“Harper is one of our nation’s most critical voices on the issues of race, gender, faith, and justice. In an era when the world feels unmoored, Harper anchors us in the truth of what brought America to the brink. Through masterful storytelling and deep spiritual reflection, Harper weaves together ten generations of her family story with the story of America. Then she points the way forward to a world where all can flourish. Fortune is necessary reading for us all.”
— Kirsten Powers, New York Times bestselling author, CNN senior political analyst, and USA Today columnist
“‘Whoever saves a life,’ the rabbis teach, ‘saves the whole world.’ In this brilliant story of Fortune, which is also the story of America, Harper demonstrates how one who narrates a life also tells the story of the whole world. Take and read how one family and the whole world were broken by the lies of race, and how we might be part of repairing the breach.”
— Rev. Dr . William J. Barber II , president, Repairers of the Breach; author of We Are Called to Be a Movement
“The magic of Lisa is this: she tells the whole truth of our historical existence as a nation built upon racist structures, ideologies, and laws. In Fortune , Harper lays bare the guttural facts about where America sits in the expanse between the bright promise of ‘I Have a Dream’ and the rayless reality of ‘Make America Great Again.’ In the end, she makes clear the work we must accomplish to see that our hope for true equality and justice never fades.”
— Jen Hatmaker, New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and host of the For the Love podcast
“It is difficult to write a book on race, faith, family, reparations, and justice in ways that are compelling to people who are either tired of or resistant to thinking about these matters. Harper has written just such a book. Harper has the rare gift of speaking honestly in ways that remind you of Tom Skinner, and of speaking intimately in ways that remind you of Maya Angelou. There are few evangelical writers who match the power of her voice. I am very glad we all get to hear it in print.”
— Willie James Jennings , professor, Yale Divinity School
“Harper is a masterful storyteller. In Fortune , Harper offers us a front-row seat to the intergenerational story of her family as they moved from being a community of enslaved Africans to free African Americans. With a sociohistorical scalpel and unflinching honesty, she unpacks the sound of her family’s names, an African American family in White America where the bone of racism chokes the breath out of everyone and everything it touches, including democracy itself. Faced with the choice of becoming broken-winged birds from the weight of racism, the men and women in Fortune choose to both fly in it and above it. This is the magnificent breath of fresh air that we inhale from the genius of this African American family.”
— Ruby Sales , founder of the Spirithouse Project, long distance runner for justice, social critic, popular educator, and Black folk theologian
“‘How do we repair what race broke in the world?’ This is what Lisa Sharon Harper challenges us to consider in her new book. She takes us on a journey of discovery using her family history as the vessel, and calls us to contemplate not only the cost and pain of racism but the promise of an ‘America yet to be’—should we dare to confront our past, repair the damage, and demand a future that belongs to us all. A fantastic read and an important work in America’s search for her authentic self.”
— Mitch Landrieu , former mayor of New Orleans; founder of E Pluribus Unum
Previous Works by Lisa Sharon Harper
The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right
Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith (coauthor)
Left, Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics (coauthor)
Catch: A Play in One Act
Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican . . . or Democrat
An’ Push da Wind Down: A Play in Two Acts
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2022 by Lisa Sharon Harper
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3273-8
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The Author is represented by the literary agency of Ross Yoon Agency.
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.
Dedication
To all my relations Who struggled under the weight of oppression— Stre