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Poet Yusef Komunyakaa asks, “When we witness something, are we responsible for what we witness?”

We Are Bridges answers “yes” on every page Lane has crafted. This memoir considers all that feeds or fails to feed motherhood. Throughout, Lane weaves personal and historical geographies, lineages, upbringings, and upheavals into a complete tapestry validating her glorious existence as a Black mother.

Early on she tells readers, “The more folks bury a thing, the more they sweep it under a rug, the bigger it becomes, the filthier it becomes—the more it demands to be raised.” Here, the crucial undertaking makes itself known because too often both the trauma and joy of Black parenting are overlooked, misunderstood, and stereotyped.

“Trauma” and “joy” are not buzz words for reflection in Lane’s hands. This is not whining, but rather “plant[ing] dynamite.” Lane’s finger, aimed at herself, digs her introspection so deep, what becomes devastated are all the false notions that limit and confound Blackness, growth, parenting.

We Are Bridges is Lane’s lifelong walk with responsibility, with risk, and most of all—with love. I can’t help but conjure the Gwendolyn Brooks poem “the mother” which concludes, “Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you/All.”

— F. DOUGLAS BROWN, author of ICON & Zero to Three

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“With stunning prose, beautiful imagery, and raw honesty, Cassandra Lane takes us inside her family’s Southern Black history, including the unconscionable lynching of her great-grandfather. That tale is juxtaposed against her current-day life in Los Angeles and her decision to have a child, which she’d swore she’d never do.

The narrative is like a series of nesting dolls, in which one story begets another and is in turn shaped and colored by the other. In pages lyric and evocative, Lane paints a world in which the agonies experienced by earlier generations continue down to the current day, and yet, in the act of creation and empathy, she brings readers and her family both into a realm of not quite forgiveness, but reluctant acceptance and awe.”

— BERNADETTE MURPHY, author of Harley and Me

Cover design by Krystal Quiles

The Feminist Press, TAYO Literary Magazine, and distinguished judges Jennifer Baker, Regina Brooks, YZ Chin, Bridgett M. Davis, Juli Delgado Lopera, Brontez Purnell, KaeLyn Rich, Melissa R. Sipin, and Jamia Wilson are honored to award the 2020 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize to Cassandra Lane for her book, We Are Bridges.

Lane’s memoir weaves the story of her great-grandfather’s lynching with her experience of becoming a mother, attempting to unearth the lives of her ancestors and provide her child with a family record. The book will be published by The Feminist Press in the summer of 2021.