Dream-Chasing From The Margins: A Memoir In Essays

When long-time blogger Mia H. Archer quit her day-job in middle-age to pursue her dreams of a writing life, she thought she’d found a fun research idea for her first book-a book about friendships among Black women, an idea met with great enthusiasm from other Black women. But Mia quickly hit a writing wall when she realized how close to home the friendship topics struck and found herself tiptoeing around emotional landmines from her past. When she saw there was no avoiding the historically intersecting difficulties pervasive in Black womanhood, Mia decided to set the friendship book aside and write a different book first.

In this memoir of beautifully raw and sincere essays, Mia has chronicled her own Black woman’s journey as a preface to the Black women’s friendship book. Neither Mia or her research participants were prepared to go very deep on topics of sexuality, addiction, or rape culture. Rather than avoid these sensitive topics, Mia offered her own journey as a necessary beginning of the Black woman’s story of friendships. For Mia the writing also became a way of finding her way back from being lost as a Black woman in the patriarchy.