Review: Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brené Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I definitely loved this book! I read it for personal reasons, but I also found myself engaged in it as a qualitative researcher who is passionate about ethnography. The idea of "collective assembly" (p. 130) I believe is so indicative of why I and many of my friends are drawn to fandom. During CONS and other fandom events, people of all walks of life are able to put political and other differences aside and come together to celebrate a book, television show, novel, or other form of media that we all love so much. In a sense, we are bonding over this collective joy. I can't help wondering if we talked more about our beloved fandoms, both in person and online, and less about politics, then would our country be less politically divided? Perhaps the answer to this question is both yes and no, but it's one I want to continue to explore.
All of that said, I loved the reminder to both seek out community and stay true to oneself. Standing one's ground can be hard when one belongs to many different groups and subcultures of people, including ones that, on a surface level, seem to contradict one another. I think I have that in common with Brene Brown, among other things. I am a Unitarian Spiritualist, politically liberal feminist scholar, writer, and teacher, and I believe those sides of my identity overlap pretty well. Yet I am also a southerner who loves tailgating on UGA football Saturdays, who prays, who has two fairly visible tattoos, who is active in fandom communities, who reads comics and Young Adult Literature novels, who plays with her baby nephew, who loves going to Star Wars movies, who plays Harry Potter trivia on occasion, and who teaches English at an academically rigorous private school affiliated with the PCUSA church. All of these aspects of who I am shape me, and I'm proud of them.
People who don't know me as well probably don't see how those sides of myself overlap. But I've realized that the people who really know me get that I am passionate about community building and family as well as literacy practices and the arts, and that's why all of these aspects of who I am overlap, even though some are seemingly contradictory. Some people don't understand me because of these different sides of myself, but Brene has helped me to see that it's okay, because being authentic is important, although hard at times. Yet so long as our decisions are based in love, in the long run, we will be accepted by ourselves and for those who love us the most.

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