Hungry Hearts: Essays on Courage, Desire, and Belonging

by Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Luvvie Ajayi Jones, Amena Brown, Ashley C. Ford, Austin Channing Brown Narrated by Full Cast

Overview

Sixteen innovators, creatives, and thought leaders-Austin Channing Brown, Sue Monk Kidd, and Luvvie Ajayi Jones, among others-share intimate stories of uncovering beauty and potential through moments of fear, loss, heartbreak, and uncertainty.

Over the course of four years, the traveling love rally called Together Live brought together diverse storytellers for epic evenings of laughter, music, and hard-won wisdom to huge audiences across the country. Well-known womxn (and the occasional man) from all walks of life shared their most vulnerable truths in a radical act of love, paving the way for healing in the face of adversity.

Now, off the stage and on the pages of Hungry Hearts, sixteen of these beloved speakers offer moving, inspiring, deeply personal essays as a reminder that we can heal from grief and that divisions can be repaired. Bozoma Saint John opens herself up to love after loss; Cameron Esposito confronts the limits of self-reliance in the wake of divorce; Ashley C. Ford learns to trust herself for the first time. A heartfelt anthology of transformation, self-discovery, and courage that also includes essays by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, Amena Brown, Austin Channing Brown, Natalie Guerrero, Sue Monk Kidd, Connie Lim (MILCK), Nkosingiphile Mabaso, Jillian Mercado, Priya Parker, Geena Rocero, Michael Trotter and Tanya-Blount Trotter of The War and Treaty, and Maysoon Zayid, Hungry Hearts shows how reconnecting with our own burning, undeniable intuition points us toward our unique purpose and the communities where we most belong.


Audiobook Table of Contents:
Introduction by Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, read by the author
"Women on the Loose" by Sue Monk Kidd, read by Cassandra Campbell 
"Reaching for Ambition" by Austin Channing Brown, read by Nicole Lewis 
"Making Room" by Ashley C. Ford, read by Shayna Small 
"The Freedom of Me" by Tanya Blount-Trotter, read by the author
"Period Playlist" by Amena Brown, read by the author
"On the Horrors of Fitting In" by Cameron Esposito, read by the author
"The View" by Michael Trotter, Jr., read by the author
"That Traveling Heat" by Connie Lim (MILCK), read by the author
"Flying Free" by Jillian Mercado, read by Frankie Corzo 
"My Funny Valentine" by Maysoon Zayid, read by the author
"Wake Up, Love" by Bozoma Saint John, read by the author
"Lucy, Full Of Life" by Geena Rocero, read by the author
"Choosing Love" by Nkosingiphile Mabaso, read by the author
"When Sisterhood Ends" by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, read by the author
"The Wisdom of a Group and the Wisdom of the Self" by Priya Parker, read by Soneela Nankani 
"On Silence" by Natalie Guerrero, read by the author
Epilogue by Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, read by the author
About the Contributors read by Frankie Corzo

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Sue Monk Kidd! Ashley C. Ford! Cameron Esposito! Bozoma Saint John! The gang’s all here—in this book of essays, 16 writers reflect movingly on all different ways to be in loving relationships. If you are looking for a little bit of gentleness, a warm word from writers you can trust, well, here it is.”—Glamour

“This gem of a collection includes deeply personal, restorative, and funny essays by some magical people: Amena Brown . . . on her period playlist, Cameron Esposito on the horrors of fitting in and group fitness, Ashley C. Ford on what can come after heartbreak, Austin Channing Brown on the time the word ‘ambitious’ hit differently, Priya Parker on the wisdom of a group and the wisdom of the self, Jillian Mercado on losing and gaining your freedom, Natalie Guerrero on dismantling silence, and more.”—goop

“Each essay is infused with sincerity and introspection, creating a connection with readers as the contributors reveal their vulnerabilities with candor and emotion. . . . A cathartic collection with broad appeal.”—Kirkus Reviews

Library Journal

02/12/2021

Based on the popular Together Live traveling event series, this collection edited by debut author Walsh features elegantly written stories by a group of diverse storytellers. Each writer, from Austin Channing Brown to Luvvie Ajayi Jones, has a distinct voice, yet their writing cohesively brings stories of hope and heart to the forefront. Contributors discuss everything from flying with a disability, to making a playlist to celebrate that time of the month, to trying to fit in with friends, to meeting your best friend when you unknowingly follow a guy you like into Bible study. Featuring stories about grief, friendships, careers, courage, trials, and triumphs, this collection truly has something for every reader; nonfiction, self-help, romance, even suspense (there's a story that mentions getting lost in a corn maze that will have readers holding their breath). Fans of the featured contributors, including Maysoon Zayid and Sue Monk Kidd, or anyone looking for a refreshing take on everyday moments will find much to enjoy. VERDICT This collection of stories will make readers laugh, cry, and come back for more; readers will enjoy the book as a whole, as it is impossible to pick a favorite story.—Natalie Browning, Longwood Univ. Lib., Farmville, VA

Kirkus Reviews

2020-12-25
Personals essays from diverse storytellers.

The book stems from Together Live, an on-stage event that ran from 2016 to 2020, bringing together storytellers to share their most vulnerable moments with the audience. The goal of the program was to encourage others to share their stories and pave the way for healing. Unable to continue during the pandemic, Together Live evolved into this book, in which 16 contributors open their hearts on the page. “We have all experienced similar feelings of heartbreak, failure, betrayal, longing, triumph, and joy,” writes editor Walsh. “Bravely sharing our truth and encouraging others to share theirs creates a type of magic that has the power to heal and connect us more deeply to one another.” Sue Monk Kidd writes about how she learned, as Emile Zola wrote, “to live out loud,” replacing her restlessness with a sense of direction. Tanya Blount-Trotter examines her feelings of fear and the events that led her to discover that she was the only one holding herself back in life. Looking back at high school, Priya Parker demonstrates how the power of a group (“a mix of brainy-but-irrelevant band nerds like me and popular, cool girls”) helped her find her own beat, and Natalie Guerrero explores the importance of speaking her truth despite the risks involved: “Here’s what I didn’t know about silence until I popped the lid open: once you’re through with it, years of unexpressed rage bubble to the surface….I never knew how addicting it could be to stay small until I saw a glimpse of being bigger.” Each essay is infused with sincerity and introspection, creating a connection with readers as the contributors reveal their vulnerabilities with candor and emotion. Other contributors include Luvvie Ajayi Jones, Austin Channing Brown, Maysoon Zayid, and Geena Rocero.

A cathartic collection with broad appeal.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172815850
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/09/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Introduction 

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh

If I told you that my parents got divorced when I was nine years old, it would communicate a fact—but it wouldn’t help you know me better. What if, instead, I told you this: One morning when I was nine years old, my dad told us we were having a family meeting after school. I was so excited, I could barely breathe. I had never been to a meeting before and it sounded important. Between classes, I asked some friends if they’d ever been to one, and my friend Pamela explained to me that a family meeting is when you decide where you are going on vacation. Wow! I thought. My first vacation! She told me about an amazing ride at Disney World called It’s a Small World and sang me the song about a small world with a shared sun, where a smile meant friendship to everyone. It sounded like heaven.

When I got home from school, I found a yellow legal pad and wrote a detailed list of the reasons Disney World was an educational place. I arrived at our family meeting ready to advocate for my choice with all my might. When, instead of calling the meeting to order and asking where we’d like to go on vacation, my parents calmly sat down and told my siblings and me that they were getting divorced, my mind went blank. All I can remember now is how desperately I hugged the legal pad to my chest, wishing I could make it disappear. I had never been so wrong about something so big. That moment was a tectonic shift not only in my understanding of my family, but in the way I trusted myself and the world. What else did I think was permanent that might change in an instant? How else was my innocence leaving me exposed to pain and confusion? I can still feel the legal pad’s solid edges pressing into my hands—the physical, almost shameful evidence of a world I no longer inhabited and never would again.

I expose my vulnerability by telling you about my Disney World list instead of just saying “When I was nine my parents got divorced” because I want to share more of myself—my history, my soul, my heart. And I believe that sharing my full humanity honors you, in your full humanity. After a lifetime of listening and thirty years working as a literary agent, professionally midwifing thousands of people’s stories, I’ve learned firsthand that bravely sharing our truth and encouraging others to share theirs creates a type of magic that has the power to heal and connect us more deeply to one another. 

Sharing our authentic stories can be transformational. Someone may look very different from us on the outside, but what our true stories reveal is that, on the inside, we have all experienced similar feelings of heartbreak, failure, betrayal, longing, triumph, and joy. We all want the same things—to be loved, to be seen, and to belong. We all have dreams that our lives will make a difference. Our stories illustrate that.

It’s all too easy to compare our insides to other people’s outsides, imagining some version of a perfect life others are living, while we are left with our imperfect ones. In that disconnect between our perception and reality is a void where loneliness, anxiety, and depression often grow. But there is an antidote—one we all have access to. Sharing the real stories of our hearts, our vulnerable and hungry hearts, allows us to connect to others—insides to insides. When someone hears our story, we feel seen, we know we matter, and we instantly realize we’re not alone. That’s why I call it magic. Because it is.

My purpose has always been to amplify people’s voices, to build a giant megaphone for people to be heard far and wide. “This book will change everything” is something I have said and meant too many times to count. Great books are like that—totally transformational. I cannot imagine where I would be had I not been found—like a search and rescue team locating me on a snowy mountain—by books. Growing up, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maxine Hong Kingston were my most impactful teachers. Finding me in my lonely teenage bedroom, they shined a light, gave me words for my own experience, and made me feel I belonged. It made perfect sense that I would want to spend my adult life as close to books and their authors as possible. 

After two decades as the leader of the literary division of a major global talent agency, representing and advocating for the most amazing, courageous, trailblazing, and luminous authors on the planet, selling their books to publishers and filmmakers and bringing their words into the world, living my dream come true every day, something unexpected happened: my dream evolved.

Authors write in solitude and we read in solitude. I’ve always loved that—but I found myself starting to long for community in a more intimate and immediate way. I wanted to bring people together as stories were shared, craving the magnified power of a collective experience. The universe provided the most perfect opportunity, and I was beyond blessed to collaborate on Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want tour. I spent twelve weeks on the road with hundreds of thousands of people, forming a collective heartbeat of hope and change. I joked it should have been called “the life I want” tour because I never wanted it to end. But when it did, I knew there was no going back for me. Something too big had shifted inside me. 

I yearned to turn up the volume on the voices our mainstream media culture wasn’t often giving the microphone to: people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, and people of all religious faiths. Out of that yearning, Together Live was born.

A speaking tour featuring the storytelling of writers, poets, musicians, and performers of all sorts, Together Live aimed to share stories from a stage that featured a diverse group of people, mostly womxn and the occasional man, who shared a desire for a more compassionate, equal, and just world. We made sure that ticket prices were affordable so that everyone with a hungry heart would be welcome. We set sail in the fall of 2016, and for four years our traveling love rally, including the contributors in this anthology, communed with fifty thousand kindred spirits. The word most often used to describe our event was “life-changing.” Life-changing. Yet all we did was sit on a couch onstage, share our wholehearted truths, and ask the audience to do the same. We entered every night as strangers in a new city and ended every night as a family—dancing, laughing, and crying together.

When it became clear that we would not be able to gather in theaters around the country in 2020, many of the outrageously talented and generous souls who had participated in Together Live decided to share their stories in book form. This anthology is the result of this effort. The title, Hungry Hearts, came from Sue Monk Kidd’s essay “Women on the Loose,” in which she describes a “big hungry thing in [her] heart” that was pushing her to write, when she “knew nothing about being a writer.” Reading Sue’s brilliant words, I wondered: What do our deepest hearts’ desires say about who we are? What does the hunger in our hearts motivate us to do? When we listen to what our hearts have to say, what do we hear? The incredible essays in this collection offer a range of answers to these questions. This anthology features the work of an intersectional group of storytellers writing with their own unique perspectives, yet all sharing a desire to find purpose, community, and resilience in the face of heartbreak, discomfort, and fear. As a group, these contributors are wildly diverse, yet they all have a brave and compassionate open heart. And on our Together Live tour, despite our many differences and varied lived experiences, we became a “road family.” Turns out that Disney World ride was right, it is a small world after all. 

As a culture, we’ve learned a lot about division, loss, and change. Yet when all else falls away, we have our stories and we have one another. Full stop. My hope is that as you read each person’s vulnerable truth, you’ll be given courage to share your own. As you remember the confusion, shame, and fear of a moment when, unsuspectingly, your world turned upside down, like it did for me with my yellow legal pad pressed to my chest, you will take a chance and share it, perhaps with someone who looks nothing like you. You’ll see first-hand what I mean by magic. I believe in my bones that authentic storytelling is a radical act of love that can connect and heal our fractured world. For it to work, we need your story too. Together, we rise.

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