White Picket Fences: Turning Toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege

We need honest conversations about privilege.
As an affluent white woman with southern roots and an Ivy League education, Amy Julia Becker considers what it means to be a person of privilege. She comes to believe that privilege harms everyone—those who are excluded from it and those who benefit from it. Her insights into privilege are rounded out by her experience as the mother of a child with special needs fighting against diminished expectations and withheld opportunities for her daughter. Amy Julia reminds us that the white picket fences that seem pristine and good can also prevent us from knowing and loving our neighbors as we experience the messy, complicated beauty and sorrow of the world.

White Picket Fences is an invitation to respond to privilege with generosity, humility, and hope. This book opens us to questions we are afraid to ask, so that we can walk further from fear and closer to love, in all its fragile and mysterious possibilities.