Unbound

How do you heal from something that has defined your life? How do you take a story steeped in pain and transform it into one that saves others? In Unbound, Tarana Burke—the founder of the ‘me too.’ movement—answers these questions through the most intimate form of activism: empathy born of lived experience. Her memoir traces the journey from childhood abuse and silence in the Bronx to global leadership in a movement that redefined how we talk about sexual violence.

Burke contends that healing starts with recognizing your worth and speaking your truth, even when that truth shakes the foundations of everything you believe. Through stories that span decades—from her painful encounters with sexual violence to her community organizing in Selma, Alabama—she builds a case for empathy and courage as the key forces that unlock transformation. You can’t help others heal until you have faced your own scars; you can’t dismantle silence until you give voice to the parts of yourself that were buried to survive.

A Journey from Silence to Voice

Burke opens with her discovery that the words “me too,” which she had used for years in grassroots survivor workshops, had suddenly gone viral without her. That morning in 2017—the catalyst for the global movement—threw her into panic, not pride. She feared that her work to support Black and Brown survivors would be erased, overshadowed by white women’s stories. But then, as she read strangers’ stories of pain and self-discovery, she realized that this viral eruption was also a spiritual calling. Empathy was doing its work globally, and her mission had prepared her for this moment of collective awakening. That realization reframes the entire book: what began as personal survival becomes a map for communal healing.

Growing Up in the Bronx: The Seed of Strength

Burke’s childhood shaped both her resilience and her wounds. Raised by a fiercely independent mother and an Afrocentric grandfather who modeled social consciousness, Tarana learned early to take pride in being Black and bold. Yet this pride coexisted with shame. Her early experiences with sexual assault fractured her sense of self, splitting her into two identities: the “good girl” who followed rules and the “dirty girl” who carried guilt and secrecy. This psychological split remained throughout her life, silently dictating how she viewed love, worthiness, and community. Her stepfather, Mr. Wes, represented safety and love, but even he couldn’t protect her from predators in her neighborhood. The defining trauma at age seven initiated a lifetime of learning how to trust again—not just others, but herself.

Unkindness as a Form of Violence

Burke introduces the concept of “unkindness as a serial killer.” She exposes how cruelty—especially labeling someone as ugly or unworthy—can infest the soul as deeply as physical harm. In one haunting story, she recalls being called ugly by a stranger, beginning a lifelong battle with self-perception. This emotional violence mirrors what societal neglect often does to marginalized people: it convinces them they are less than human. Her reflections echo bell hooks’s idea that love and affirmation are radical political acts (“All About Love,” 2000). By naming beauty and self-worth as acts of rebellion, Burke reframes kindness as survival and self-love as resistance.

Community as the Engine of Healing

Burke’s path to healing also unfolds through community organizing. Her life in Alabama—working with youth movements, cultural centers, and the descendants of civil rights icons—links personal healing with social justice. Through organizations like the Black Belt Arts & Cultural Center and Just Be, Inc., she creates spaces where Black girls can reclaim their power and confront sexual violence directly. Her concept of community mirrors feminist and liberation theology traditions (similar to Audre Lorde and Paulo Freire): true healing requires collective empathy and accountability. Individual survival is necessary, but liberation comes when survivors see themselves not as broken, but as whole and powerful together.

The Courage of “Me Too”

Ultimately, Burke argues that empathy is more than compassion—it is courage in action. The words “me too” act as a bridge between isolation and solidarity. When Heaven, a twelve-year-old girl in one of her camps, confides that she was abused, Burke freezes. She avoids the conversation out of fear, only to realize later that Heaven needed her to say, “me too.” That failure becomes the movement’s catalyst. Years later, Burke finally embraces those two words aloud, turning personal guilt into a universal call for connection. In this way, the book doesn’t just recount the history of the ‘me too.’ movement; it paints the emotional blueprint behind it—a blueprint born from imperfection, empathy, and the refusal to stay silent.

Why It Matters to You

Burke’s story matters because it dismantles the myth that power must come from perfection. Her journey proves that vulnerability is the birthplace of real strength. When she asks who gets to be heard, she challenges every reader—especially those who have felt invisible or unworthy—to find freedom through empathy and courage. Whether you have faced trauma, supported someone who has, or simply want to live with more integrity, her message is clear: healing is a collective act, and your truth has transformative power when shared in community.

One of the most harrowing yet foundational parts of Burke’s journey begins with her childhood experiences of sexual abuse. Through her vivid recollections, she shows how silence—forced by fear and misunderstanding—can become its own prison. She was assaulted first at seven and again at nine, both times by older boys from her Bronx neighborhood. These events became defining moments not only of trauma but of learning how shame rewires self-perception.

The Formation of “Bad” and “Good” Selves

After her first assault, Burke split internally into two versions of herself: the good girl who followed every rule and the dirty, bad girl who was secretly convinced she deserved punishment. This psychological divide carried through her adolescence, shaping how she viewed her body and relationships. Her Catholic upbringing intensified this guilt—she learned to confess lesser sins rather than the one she couldn’t name. This technique of hiding behind “cover sins” is her metaphor for survival: keeping the truth suppressed so that she could keep living, even if half-alive.

The Social Anatomy of Shame

Burke’s shame was not born in isolation; it was cultivated by cultural silence surrounding sexual violence in Black communities. Adults spoke in coded language—“messing with little girls”—but rarely named abuse outright. Without vocabulary or empathy, children internalized fault. Burke realized decades later that the entire system was complicit. Her mother’s attempt to “toughen” her, the community’s emphasis on being good, and the church’s moral codes all created conditions under which silence thrived. (This mirrors themes in Jesmyn Ward’s and Roxane Gay’s writings about how unspoken trauma shapes Black womanhood.)

The Consequences of Silence

By the time Burke reached adolescence, her silence was both protection and poison. She developed a “bad girl” persona—fighting, swearing, and guarding her body fiercely. In one defining scene, she beat up a girl at school and described the resulting power as relief, not guilt. Fighting became her therapy. Yet inside, she was still the little girl desperate for someone to ask her the right question. When Ms. Davis, an adult neighbor, confronted her gently after one abuse episode, Burke sensed that Ms. Davis knew what had happened. But even that flicker of recognition carried conditions—“Don’t tell on these boys, or you’ll cause trouble for your family.” That unintentional warning solidified Burke’s silence for decades.

Turning Memory into Liberation

The adult Burke revisits these scenes not just to recount them, but to reclaim the language that was missing. She calls what happened rape, molestation, and abuse—words she couldn’t access as a child. Naming, she explains, is not merely linguistic; it’s transformational. It’s how survivors take back power. Her detailed descriptions give readers permission to see how common experiences of silencing are—and how healing begins when the truth is finally spoken out loud. This redefinition of language echoes Judith Herman’s classic psychology text Trauma and Recovery, which argues that trauma healing begins with restoration of narrative. For Burke, retelling her story as hers is the first act of recovery.

Burke insists that emotional cruelty—especially labeling and ridicule—can kill a person as surely as violence. Her chapter “No Alibi” centers on the moment she was publicly called ugly by a stranger. That single comment acted like a curse, infecting her sense of self for years. It represents the everyday violence Black women experience when society tells them they are undeserving of beauty or love.

Ugly as a Social Weapon

Burke unpacks the word “ugly” not as mere insult, but as a systemic tool used to dehumanize Black girls. When that man said she was “too ugly to look like” his daughter, he was echoing centuries of racist conditioning. Events like these created what she calls “unkindness as a serial killer.” You can dodge sticks and stones, she says, but not words—they sink into your spirit and rot. She fought back by becoming mean herself, building a shield of toughness, but the armor also trapped her pain inside. This chapter’s reflections recall Audre Lorde’s warning that silence will not protect you—it only metastasizes harm.

The Complexity of Physical Identity

As a teenager, her “ugliness” became a boundary others weaponized. Boys desired her body but recoiled at her face, a contradiction she learned to preempt by fighting before being humiliated. She narrates a subway encounter where a man first catcalls her, then insults her appearance publicly. Burke allows readers to feel the split-second between humiliation and rage—the echo of old wounds being reopened. The story intertwines personal gender politics and social oppression, echoing the studies of Melissa Harris-Perry on Black women’s stereotypes (“Sister Citizen,” 2011).

The Reclamation of Self-Worth

Rather than ending with despair, Burke uses this recurring theme to build a radical definition of beauty: worthiness divorced from physical validation. Her idea of healing through empathy begins with seeing yourself as worthy of empathy. “I will not bend anymore,” she declares. The phrase signifies her refusal to internalize others’ cruelty. For readers who have faced body shame or emotional abuse, her insight is revolutionary—self-worth is not something you earn through others’ approval; it’s your birthright to reclaim.

Burke’s transformation from survivor to activist begins with the twin influences of faith and education. Her chapters on Catholic school life and her journey to discovering Black radical thought show how spirituality and learning can both repress and liberate. She was drawn to Catholicism’s rituals of absolution—confession, prayer, and penance—but later realized those same structures often reinforced her shame.

The Church and the Confessional

In Sacred Heart School, she became obsessed with confession rituals, inventing small sins to mask the big one she couldn’t speak. In hindsight, she sees this as a metaphor for survival: learning to navigate oppressive systems without challenging them openly. She received psychological comfort but no healing. This spiritual dissonance drove her toward history—toward understanding that faith without justice is hollow.

Leaving Religion, Finding Resistance

Her grandfather intervened by introducing her to Harlem’s Liberation Bookstore and texts like They Came Before Columbus and Before the Mayflower. Reading these Afrocentric works shifted her allegiance from church to consciousness. She learned that spiritual salvation was incomplete without political liberation. These ideas—woven into her later activism—mirror themes from James Baldwin and Howard Thurman, both of whom saw faith as inseparable from justice.

The Classroom as Battlefield

As a student, Burke challenged racist narratives head-on. In one incident, she corrected a teacher who implied Jesus looked like a white man, asserting his African roots instead. These confrontations revealed her growing courage to speak. Education became her weapon, not her leash. Her escalating awareness of injustice pushed her toward activism in high school—joining “21st Century Youth Leadership Movement,” a program linking civil rights veterans with youth training. That environment taught her to see herself as part of a continuum, not an anomaly, which later formed the backbone of her organizing philosophy.

Burke’s adulthood centers around community organizing in Selma, Alabama—a new chapter that transforms personal healing into collective work. Her years founding programs for youth, battling poverty, and facing betrayal demonstrate how empathy becomes activism. Working under civil rights legends like Faya Rose Touré Sanders, she learned both visionary leadership and the dangers of unchecked power.

Building a Grassroots Legacy

After college, Burke joined the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement, which trained young activists through summer camps. These experiences taught her that organizing was about connecting pain and purpose. She recalls children confronting abuse for the first time during camp discussions. One young girl, Heaven, who disclosed sexual abuse to Burke, became the catalyst for Burke’s life mission. Unable to respond with her own story, Burke watched Heaven walk away feeling abandoned. That silence haunted her—the empathy she withheld became her life’s work to restore.

The Birth of Just Be, Inc. and JEWELS

Through her organization, Just Be, Inc., Burke created spaces for Black girls to reclaim their worth. Programs like JEWELS taught self-awareness and resilience against exploitation. She witnessed cycles of abuse, poverty, and silence repeating across generations. The movement she envisioned wasn’t about punishment—it was about transforming pain into connection. (Her approach echoes community-based healing practices discussed by adrienne maree brown in Emergent Strategy.)

Forging Empathy Through Story

When Burke finally uttered “me too,” it wasn’t a slogan—it was a spiritual revelation. The phrase distilled years of organizing into two words that honor shared humanity. She emphasizes that empathy is not pity but an equal exchange that says, “I see you because I’ve been you.” This distinguishes her movement from purely institutional reform. The work begins within communities—in churches, schools, and homes—where silence still reigns. Her decision to center Black and Brown survivors fills a gap left by mainstream feminism, proving that empathy must be intersectional to be truly liberating.

When betrayal and exhaustion pushed Burke to leave Selma, it marked a turning point from obedience to autonomy. Her mentors, once icons, had become obstacles. Her choice to move to Philadelphia was both spiritual and survivalist—a leap based purely on faith. “God told me to go,” she recalls, describing the intuitive certainty that guided her packing process before even knowing where she’d land.

Faith as Compass

Burke’s relationship with faith transforms here. Unlike the rigid Catholicism of her youth, she experiences what she calls “the anointing”—a visceral connection to divine guidance without dogma. Her belief system now fuses spirituality with intuition. This guidance leads to a job in Philadelphia and a new community that becomes the incubator for the ‘me too.’ movement.

Discovering “Me Too” in Practice

In Philly, Burke refines her workshops for young girls, adding stories of famous survivors like Oprah Winfrey and Gabrielle Union. She invites participants to write “me too” if they identify with these stories. That simple exercise lights the spark of collective truth-telling. It transforms shame into solidarity. Each girl writing those words without fear shows how empathy can translate directly into healing practices.

Healing Her Family

One of the book’s most emotional chapters recounts a moment when Burke’s own child, Kaia, reveals having experienced abuse at camp years prior. This revelation shatters Burke anew, yet it also completes a circle. By responding with empathy instead of anger, Burke breaks generational silence. She tells Kaia her own story for the first time, modeling what healing honesty looks like. The scene captures everything ‘me too’ stands for: not just survival, but shared transformation.

Burke’s later reflections confront the mainstream visibility of #MeToo and the painful disparities within it. After the hashtag went viral, she watched how the media celebrated certain survivors while overlooking others, particularly Black women. Her critique is powerful: “Sexual violence doesn’t discriminate, but the response to it does.”

The Unequal Faces of Justice

Burke notes that white women’s stories often receive validation, while Black women’s are politicized or ignored. She recalls Cicely Tyson’s testimony about assault and uses it as emblematic of how perseverance replaces justice for many women of color. Her commentary parallels Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality framework: identities overlap and compound marginalization, requiring tailored approaches to healing and accountability.

Confronting Community Silence

Burke also challenges the Black community’s reluctance to address sexual violence by its own members. She points to backlash over her involvement in Surviving R. Kelly, revealing how cultural loyalty often outweighs justice for victims. Instead of condemnation, she calls for “a politic of grace”—an ethic of care where accountability and empathy coexist. This nuanced stance moves beyond punishment toward transformative justice, an idea aligned with activists like Mariame Kaba.

Healing as Collective Responsibility

Burke views liberation as contingent upon communal empathy. The work, she insists, must happen in our own homes and communities, not just on social media or in courtrooms. “We have to care for each other,” she says, linking the political to the personal. Her declaration that she “will not bend anymore” becomes an anthem of integrity—for herself, her community, and every survivor still finding their voice.