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Featured works

Works listed in this section are recommended by staff at the Black Resource Collection at North Portland Library. In addition to current features, see past featured works.

May 2008

Black Pain: it just looks like we're not hurting: real talk for when there's nowhere to go but up by Terrie M. Williams

New York : Scribner, 2008.

Terrie Williams is a trained social worker turned high-powered publicist who has represented everyone from Eddie Murphy and Miles Davis to Johnnie Cochran and Janet Jackson. In Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We're Not Hurting, she outlines her battle with depression. Further, she shares the stories of the famous and the ordinary who have battled mental illness.

Black people, especially, says Williams, have a specific historical context that makes our relationship with mental illness unique:

"Can you imagine how heavy the weight of all that trauma must have been in the hearts, minds, and souls of our ancestors?" she asks. "They had no outlet in which to express it and no proper means of processing it. Instead of airing our dirty laundry and getting help for our issues, we engage in behaviors that are harmful to ourselves or others such as crime, violence, promiscuous sex, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, workaholism, shopaholism, gambling, in order to cope, and it's killing us."

More than a book of testimonials, Black Pain offers solutions — suggestions from mental health professionals and a resource list of books, articles, websites, films, inspirational art, and even "cards with a stay-strong feel."