Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

by Tarana Burke

The journey that began that Sunday morning in the fall of 2017 is its own story—one you’ve likely heard, watched, or read about again and again.

The story I’m going to tell is about how we got to those two simple yet infinitely powerful words: me too.

The story of how empathy for others—without which the work of ‘me too’ doesn’t exist—starts with empathy for that dark place of shame where we ...

There is no here without where I was: stuck and scared and ashamed, a place I remained until the need to care for someone else’s shame saved me too.

Unkindness is a serial killer.

Death in the flesh sometimes seems like a less excruciating way to succumb than the slow and steady venom unleashed by mean-spirited, cruel words and actions that poison you over time. I guess that’s why I can’t stand the old children’s rhyme: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Every time I hear it, I think to myself: that’s a lie. You can dodge a rock, but you can’t unhear a word. You can’t undo the intentional damage that some words have on your mind, body, and spirit.

Somehow the world convinces us that its unkindness is the cost of admission for sharing space with the attractive—and we believe it. We don’t just believe it, we welcome it, but in degrees. Not usually with a grin and wink—though sometimes we do—but mostly with a scowl, sometimes a foul word, sometimes an attitude, or even a few tears. But there is a small part of us that also feels alive and seen and grateful for that barely there acknowledgment. The flip side is being invisible, unseen, which is equally painful. And the thing is, either one will kill your spirit over time.

I had learned to travel in this body, with this face, in specific ways to ensure I made it to my destination safely.

I tried not to wear form-fitting clothes, but my track body—medium frame, small waist, thick thighs, and large derriere—was hard to conceal. I immediately started looking for a seat where I could put my head down and hide.

The only clear memory I have is running through the litany of rules I had broken: Never go off without permission. Never be out of sight when you’re playing outside. Never come upstairs late. Stay away from the grown-up boys. Never ever let anyone touch your private parts.

My grandparents made a good life in the Bronx. Grandma was a nurse and Granddaddy worked for General Motors, which might have placed them in the upper middle class instead of working class if they hadn’t had six children—my mother was the oldest.

We were what some would call a pro-Black family. My granddaddy believed in celebrating Blackness in as many ways as possible.

What most of the world knows about the Bronx comes from the images of burned-out buildings and poverty-stricken Black and Latinx youth that littered the newspapers and voyeuristic art exhibits of the ’70s and ’80s.

It is true that there were very few resources in the hood, but it was the first place I learned the value of using what you have to create what you need.

People struggled, but they also built.

The stories of neighborhoods reclaiming and rebuilding burned-out building...

But when I think of my own journey to healing, so much of it mirrors the power, resilience, and tenacit...

My mother had raised me to be inquisitive. We were close, like single mothers and daughters often are. I read a lot and was inquisitive, which made me conversant with adults in a way that a lot of my peers were

My mother had raised me as a bookworm, and so I spent most of the eighth grade doing exactly what my granddaddy had said to do. As fast as I could read a book, he’d recommended a new one.

I was an outsider—in more ways than just geographically. There was no harassment for being smart. Everyone was pretty cool about it as long as it was clear who you were. If you were a smart kid, you hung with other smart kids and did “smart kid things” like joining the honor bowl league or science club.

I landed in an undefined area.

I had tested into a number of honors and advanced courses, so I spent most of my day with a group of kids who fit somewhere between eager nerd or naturally smart with an attitude (like me)—or they were just white.

She looked me dead in the eyes and said, “never let them see you sweat.” It was advice I’d hear from her again and again.

She told me to practice saying one phrase with force, so that everyone in earshot believed me: “Fuck you!” Even if I were scared, she said, my mouth could usually get me out of a tight corner if I was loud and convincing enough.

“But you always have to be prepared to fight,” my aunt warned. I thought of my mom’s street advice. Ever since I had been jumped by three girls on my way home in the fourth grade, my mom would tell me that if it ever happened again to pick the one with the biggest mouth, punch her in the face o...

I was a stellar student on paper, but the principal warned me not to fall into bad habits like violence. I had to hold my tongue not to say how can I not make violence a habit when I am surrounded by it?

My year at Truman was a roller-coaster ride. I started out wide-eyed and unaware, and then once I was forced to defend myself and fight back I felt powerful. But this power came with overwhelming anxiety. All of the time.

I rejected close friendships with the other girls in my honors classes and instead opted for a band of, what some might call, misfits. I felt like myself around them or at least part of myself.

there is a line repeated in the poem: “there was no air.” I was captivated by that line. I would say it over and over again. I didn’t know why but each time it felt like a small release.

Growing up, I had a short list of emotions to cycle through: happy, sad, fear, and anger. I couldn’t quite grasp the other ones: shame, grief, vulnerability, and emotional pain.

We didn’t get the air to be reborn and handled warmly.

For all the chaos that happened at Truman, my honors classes were a place I could flex my smarts and not have to be on defense all the time. I spoke up and gave my opinion, and it was rewarded.

I still felt the unsettling presence of my two selves, but the more I walked in this role the more it felt like the real me.

My favorite class was Honors English. My mother was the reason that I fell in love with literature. Our home was a Black woman’s literary paradise. She had hundreds of books all over our house, and a majority of them were by the most beloved and revered Black women writers of our lifetime.

Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks and Ntozake Shange, Nikki Giovanni and M...

Maya Angelou’s books, in particular, were dazzling and inviting, but every time I asked my ...

One day, while my mom was out of the house, I couldn’t help myself. I snuck her copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings off the shelf. I had to have been around twelve. I had assumed my mother held me back from reading the book because she thought it would be too difficult to understand, but the words came easy. It didn’t take long before I was hooked.

I found myself wishing that I was her friend so that I could learn to laugh at myself too, even when I was scared. I kept reading, fascinated by the way she talked about her thoughts and emotions, and how many of them mirrored how I felt about myself.

And then Mr. Freeman was introduced.

Maya Angelou wrote of being molested and raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was eight years old. My mom, who had no idea that my life was being mirrored in this book, likely didn’t want me to read it in an attempt to protect me from an ugly reality I had unfortunately already experienced.

My twelve-year-old mind had not understood that this was a thing that happened to other girls who were innocent. I thought it was just me, or at least girls like me.

When I read about what happened to a young Maya Angelou, I was able to read her as innocent in a way I didn’t allow of myself.

Maya was decent and nice, and it seemed egregious that God would have allowed something so horrible to happen to her. It was the first time I ever realized a little girl like ...

“Phenomenal Woman”

In all the time I had spent being enamored by her life, her strength, and her words, I had never actually heard her voice. Her regal tone and accent and protracted enunciation were unlike anything I had ever heard from a Black woman. It was completely unfamiliar to me, and I was mesmerized.

She stood at a podium wearing a black-and-silver dress, with the broadest, warmest smile on her face. She made little jokes that sent flickers of laughter across the audience. She rolled her tongue and lowered her tone and pronounced every single word as if each one was her own invention.

She was absolutel...

My mother’s all-time favorite artist is Patti LaBelle. I always thought of her presence as big, grand, and divine—because of her big hair and sparkling clothes and tha...

Here was Dr. Angelou standing at a podium and, though beautifully dressed, she was using nothing but wor...

I leaned forward in my seat, my words slow and deliberate, trying to walk back my attitude. “Maya Angelou was talking about appreciating who she was as a Black woman because nobody else would. She wasn’t ‘jive talkin’ or comparing herself to white women. All Black women should feel the way she felt in the poem because we are all QUEENS. She never once mentioned white women or being white at all.”