"With skill and love, Lisa Sharon 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
"Lisa Sharon 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, Lisa Sharon 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. Lisa Sharon 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, Yale Divinity School
"Lisa Sharon 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