Through essays with stunning photography, the beloved multimedia storyteller and author of Woman of Color shares the powerful lessons she’s learned about creating a home that honors the past and celebrates the future.
“Home is a reflection of what we inherit.”
Grappling with the state of the world over the last few years—the global pandemic, climate change, threats to women’s rights, constant racial violence—LaTonya Yvette began to contemplate the concept of home. What does it mean to cultivate safety when it is constantly under threat? How can we nurture joy and peace within the spaces where we spend most of our precious time? Who can we turn to for guidance along the way?
In Stand in My Window: Meditations on Home and How We Make It, Yvette explores these kinds of questions as she takes readers through the journey of her own rediscovery of home. In eleven meditative essays, accompanied by 25 beautiful photographs taken over the course of writing the book, Yvette illustrates how the act of homemaking can be revolutionary, liberating—and one of the most powerful expressions we have of self- and community care.
Woven throughout the book is the story of the nearly 200-year-old house in upstate New York that Yvette bought and painstakingly renovated, with the aim of creating a safe space for BIPOC communities. The house—Yvette’s ultimate expression of home—provides her greatest lessons. Both visual feast and emotional salve, Stand in My Window demonstrates that home truly is what you make of it—in mind, body, soul, and in the thoughtfully curated spaces we can build for ourselves anywhere.
“LaTonya Yvette weaves together reflections and photography from some of the sweetest of life's offerings: the intimacy of home, parenting, art, memory, and a glimpse at an interiority that comes across as both sacred and true. It feels like a window, indeed, a generous, three-dimensional portrait -- that inspires the reader to reflect on their own sense of home and belonging. –Rio Cortez, New York Times bestselling author of The ABCs of Black History
Full of heart, deep and careful observations that encourage readers to pay attention to both the rhythms of their inner lives and the mundane realities of everyday life, Stand In My Window is thoughtful and liberating. I found myself pausing to take deeper breaths, to meditate on my surroundings and ask myself what is giving me a sense of belonging, where and when do I feel safest and what is bringing me the most joy? This beautiful book is one I will be gifting and returning to. Aminatou Sow, NYT-bestselling coauthor of Big Friendship