Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope - Hardcover

Holmes, Jasmine L.; Perry, Jackie Hill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0830832769 ISBN 13: 9780830832767

Publisher: IVP, 2020

Synopsis

"Wynn is my son. No little boy could be more loved by his parents. Inquisitive, fiercely affectionate, staunchly opinionated, he sees the world through eyes of wonder and has yet to become jaded by society's cruelty. I know he'll grow up with stories of having been made to feel 'other' because of the color of his skin. I want to teach him that, though life's unfair, he still has incomparable value in the eyes of his heavenly Father. I know this wondrous little person has the potential to change the world―and I want him to know it too." In Mother to Son, Jasmine Holmes shares a series of powerful letters to her young son. These are about her journey as an African American Christian and what she wants her son to know as he grows and approaches the world as a black man. Holmes deals head-on with issues ranging from discipleship and marriage to biblical justice. She invites us to read over her shoulder as she reminds Wynn that his identity is firmly planted in the person and work of Jesus Christ, even when the topic is one as emotionally charged as race in America.

About this title

About the Author

Jasmine L. Holmes is a writer and blogger at The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, Fathom Mag, Modern Reformation, and RAANetwork. She teaches Latin and humanities in a classical Christian school in Jackson, Mississippi, where she and her husband, Philip, are parenting two young sons.

Review

"These letters are personal and yet applicable to us all. With child or without. Brown or white. Married or single. We may not all understand what it is to be her, a black mother with a brown boy, but we all understand what it is like to love, to care so deeply for someone that affection becomes words." (From the foreword by Jackie Hill Perry)

"Jasmine Holmes's Mother to Son is written for a far larger audience than just her own children; she has delivered a literary benediction to grace our bookshelves, challenge our earthly cultures, strengthen our feeble hearts, and point us toward lasting hope." (K. A. Ellis, Cannada Fellow and Director, the Center for the Study of the Bible and Ethnicity at Reformed Theological Seminary, Atlanta)

"What a privilege to sit at the feet of Jasmine Holmes in these pages. In order to navigate her way through one of the thorniest conversations today―race in America―Holmes has relied on biblical wisdom to convey hard-yet-hopeful truths to her son. So much is yet to be done to repair the sins of the past; so much is still possible through the church of Jesus Christ, who carried our burdens and become the way of reconciliation." (Jen Pollock Michel, author of Surprised by Paradox and Keeping Place)

"Mother to Son is more than a collection of heartfelt letters of a young mother to her new son. Mother to Son is a missive to America and to the church about what it looks like to hope, to fear, to long, to risk, and to love―all while instilling in ourselves and in those we love and are called to lead both a sense of belonging in the present and a call to invest in a future of greater flourishing for us all." (Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well and Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More―Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist)

Edition details

• Publisher: IVP
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0830832769
• ISBN 13: 9780830832767
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 160