Sisterfriends: Portraits of Sisterly Love by Julia Chance, Michelle V. Agins, Michelle V. Agins (Photographer)

From the Publisher

A "sister"is so many things — someone who was born to your parents, your best friend, the woman you shared love, hope, or heartbreak with...and the women in Sisterfriends are all those, and more. A collage of impressions of African-American women both well-known and unknown, the essays in Sisterfriends tell beautiful stories of sisters, whether related by blood or bonded by fate. Crossing economic, social, and geographic boundaries, these sisters support each other emotionally, financially, and physically.

The stories they tell are uplifting, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking. From singer Mary J. Blige and her sister LaTonya, who moved her entire family into Mary's mansion to manage her career, to Andrea and Lorelei Williams, who grew up in a one-room studio in Harlem and often didn't have food or electricity, to Bethann Hardison and her friend Marta Vargas, who share the bond of sisterhood as friends, Sisterfriends mines the whole experience in the words of its women. Iyanla Vanzant, Gayle King, and bell hooks contribute their own sister stories that compel, provoke, and ultimately illuminatthe fascinating relationship of women who call themselves "sister."

Publishers Weekly

In a collection of photographs and testimonials called Sisterfriends: Portraits of Sisterly Love, Pulitzer-nominated photographer Michelle V. Agins and author Julia Chance (coauthor, Fine Beauty) celebrate bonds between African-American women, both famous and unknown. Bonded by blood and/or love, these women testify to the power of shared experience. A group of 10 literal sisters spanning many ages take a "sisters retreat" and do away with "Sister Negativity." Oprah Winfrey's beloved best friend, Gail King, and her sisters laugh about Gail's fame-by-proxy. Mary J. Blige's older sister, LaTonya, recalls feeling responsible for little Mary. Betty Shabazz's daughters, bell hooks and her sister and Max Roach's daughters talk about their childhood and adult relationships. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

• Forewords & Introductions
• Read an Excerpt

Forewords & Introductions

Intoduction: What I Believe

This book is about forces that move about us like wind -- unseen, yet powerful enough at times to knock us over. And it's about a little Christmas tale I wrote that was the result of such forces. Some call these forces divinity, others call them coincidence. Some just call them magic.

A few years back a newspaper reporter was interviewing me about the miraculous story behind my story The Christmas Box. Near the end of the interview he said, "You don't really expect me to believe all this."

I wasn't surprised by his skepticism. I wouldn't believe most of it myself if it hadn't happened to me. "I suspect you'll believe what you want to believe," I said. "Start with what you can see. A twenty-nine-year-old man from Utah, having never before written a book, with no publishing experience, no knowledge of the book industry and very little money, writes his first book, publishes it himself and for eight weeks outsells the biggest authors and publishing houses in the world."

He thought for a moment, then said, "Your explanation makes more sense."

As a novelist I find it ironic that this story, the most unlikely of my books, is the only one that is true. Yet, as unlikely as it may be, the miracle of The Christmas Box is undeniable. According to the Wall Street Journal, The Christmas Box had one of the highest one-week sales of any book in its list's history (until Harry Potter came along). It is the only book to simultaneously hit number one on the New York Times hardcover and paperback bestseller lists and the only novel to hit number one as a self-published book. USA Today listed it among the top twenty bestselling books of the last half decade.

But more incredible are the stories I encountered along the journey -- miraculous stories of healing and curious coincidence that often defy explanation. These are experiences that have changed the way I view the world.

In telling these stories I will try not to editorialize too much. (Just the facts, ma'am.) I will leave it to you to interpret their meaning. Still, like the reporter, in the end you will believe what you will. Ironically, the opening words of The Christmas Box are perhaps even more relevant to this book:

I share my story now for all future generations to accept or dismiss as seems them good. As for me, I believe. And it is, after all, my story.

Through the course of my Christmas Box journey there are eight things I have come to believe.

First, to paraphrase Shakespeare, I believe there is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in most people's philosophy. I believe there is occasional interaction between our world and the unseen world. I believe the gift to me of The Christmas Box was such an interaction.

Not that I have desired such gifts. Outside of prayer, I have never sought contact with the unseen world. I've never talked to a palm reader, sat in a séance or had my tea leaves read. I've never had the slightest desire to call the Psychic Friends Hotline.

Shortly after The Christmas Box hit the bestseller lists and it became known that I claimed my story was a spiritual gift, New Age disciples grilled me intensively on "channeling" -- the phenomenon of communicating with spirits. I was not interested in the discussion. I don't know how The Christmas Box story came to me. It just did -- as if it were whispered to my mind.

The media sometimes makes light of my assertion of "divine assistance," yet I'm far from being alone in such claims. Even Robert Louis Stevenson claimed that fairies delivered his stories. My feelings on this matter are similar to author Stephen King's, who once told a reporter who doubted his explanation of where his stories came from, That was fine, as long as he believed that King believed it.

I'm not surprised by the media's skepticism. I'm likewise doubtful of most of the stories I hear of supernatural phenomena, and dismiss 99 percent of them as fanciful. It's the other 1 percent that gives me pause.

For instance, I was speaking to a large group at a professional women's conference. It was a good speech, if I say so myself. The room was packed. The words flowed.

I received a standing ovation. Afterward I was ushered out to sign books at a table in the hallway. Standing in the line was a woman, sharply dressed and well groomed, with an air of poise and self-confidence. And she was visibly shaken.

"I can't believe what I saw," she said, half whispering to me, afraid that someone else might hear her. "Has anyone else told you they saw something unusual while you were speaking today?"

I told her that I didn't know what she was talking about.

She glanced about nervously. "I can't believe everyone in the audience didn't see it. While you were speaking there was suddenly a young woman standing next to you." She looked me in the eyes. "You didn't see the woman next to you?"

"No."

Her forehead wrinkled. "I've never seen anything like this. I don't know what to make of it. It's like something out of The Twilight Zone." With that she walked away.

I didn't know this woman from Eve. Maybe she just escaped from the high-security ward of the local mental hospital, but I doubt it. First, because the mentally ill embrace their delusions, not question them. Second, because in spite of her agitation, she spoke reasonably. She acted precisely the way I would act if I saw something I couldn't explain. I don't know what this woman saw, if indeed anything. But from what I know of human behavior, I believe that she really believes she saw something.

Then again, maybe she was playing some twisted sort of prank, in secret conspiracy with a minister in Denver, an aspiring author in Maui and all the other people in other parts of the world who have told me precisely the same thing -- that they saw a young woman standing next to me as I spoke. I've never seen this young woman they speak of. Maybe she exists, maybe she doesn't. I'm not sure that I care. It's the phenomenon of perfect strangers making the same claim that intrigues me.

Second, I believe there are specific moments in each life given us to influence our life paths -- a cosmic pull of a lever that switches the tracks beneath us. History abounds in such "accidents." Like the trip to the city when Henry Ford happened to come across a motorized vehicle. Like Thomas Edison's saving the life of a telegraph operator's son and being given a job at the telegraph office, where he created his first invention, or Eli Whitney's chance meeting of the widow Catherine Green and her suggestion that he might invent a machine to separate cotton from its seeds. If such providence is evident in the lives of the great, then why not the rest of us?

Third, I do not believe we are some accident of God or nature. I believe there's a purpose to our being here on this earth, and the experiences that we have come to us for our own spiritual growth and evolution. Earth is about learning, and the day it stops, school is over. Maybe that's what Heaven is -- an extended summer vacation. Or more likely, a chance to use what we learned about being human. Perhaps we might have even agreed, in some premortal state, to the experiences and trials we face.

I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a book tour, eating dinner with my media escort and her husband, when I shared with them a few of the miracles I describe in this book. When I finished, they both were quiet. Then the woman said, "We believe you. We believe there's a divinity to our lives. You need to tell the world what you've told us. We need to know there's a reason we're here."

I agree. I believe it's vital that we know of our divine life purpose. Not just to hold on to as a frightened child clutches its blanket in the darkness of her bedroom -- this is about more than easing our loneliness and fear in an apparently silent void of a universe (though it may have that effect).

Only in understanding and accepting our divine life purpose can we view the world as it really is and free ourselves from the pursuit of the "perfect life" as painted by Madison Avenue and other paradigm engineers, and pursue instead the perfect life experience -- a divine education -- so we can evolve as spiritual beings.

I believe this is among our greatest quests in life, not just to see life as it really is but to see our part in it.

Fourth, I believe that as we pursue our divine life purpose, spiritual forces will intervene to give us the experiences we need. To quote Shakespeare, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Call it, if you will, God's "micromanagement" of our lives. This, perhaps, is the very crux of this book -- to document a few of the hundreds of experiences that have led me to believe in such divinity. As I wrote in The Looking Glass,

While the mathematics of the universe may connote the existence of a Supreme Being, to me it is that which defies math's probabilities -- the impossibility of two objects colliding in an infinite void to alter each other's eternal course. In this there is divinity and an unseen hand. Perhaps this best describes my concept of God -- the divine, unseen wind that propels us through the uncharted waters of our own destiny.

Such interference may be a major, life-changing event, or as simple as an experience I had a few years back in San Diego. It was before I had a publisher, so I was driving myself from a book signing, navigating a rental car on unfamiliar roads in the dark, looking for my hotel. I was lost, lonely, hungry and tired. I was also discouraged, as the book signing had been a failure.

Suddenly I had the powerful impression that I should pull off the road into a parking lot. I followed the prompting. As I pulled in, I noticed a bookstore that I hadn't seen from the street. I thought that it must be why I had the impression. For some reason, I thought, I needed to visit that store. I found a parking place and put the car in park. Immediately there was a knock at my window. I turned to see a woman standing outside. She was young, dressed in tattered clothing. Two small children huddled behind her. I cracked open my door.

"Excuse me, sir," she said, "my children are hungry. I was wondering if you could feed them tonight."

I looked at the children, who hid their faces from me in their mother's coat.

"Of course," I said.

Across the parking lot from us was a Jack in the Box drive-in. That night I ate dinner with Mary, Angel and Bobby.

Fifth, I believe that in order to fulfill our life purpose it is vital that we ask for divine assistance in our lives. There is tremendous power in desire, and the unseen powers of divinity that can affect our lives are oftentimes just waiting for us to ask for their aid. I believe these forces must wait for our request because they are bound by the law of free agency and cannot intervene in our lives until we exercise our will and ask them to.

For instance, many years ago I had the desire to visit China. Though I didn't have the financial means for such an excursion, I wrote down my desire and prayed for the opportunity. Then, unintentionally, I forgot about the goal. Six months later a friend of mine called out of the blue. She was a media buyer and had just won a trip for two to China. She wanted to know if my wife and I would accept the trip from her as a gift. It was a life-changing experience for us, as years later, influenced by our trip, we adopted a little girl from China.

The biblical injunction "Ask and it shall be given" is paraphrased in nearly every religious text I have studied. I learned early in life about the power and efficacy of prayer. I believe that the miracles in this book would not have been possible had I not first asked for them. That which we ask of life is indeed all that it can ever be.

Sixth, life is not a solitary affair and was never meant to be. On our individual journeys there are companions placed along the trail, fellow sojourners who forever alter our paths and help determine our destination. Sometimes they carry us when we are too weary to carry ourselves. In retrospect, it is evident to me that throughout the Christmas Box Miracle there were people who stepped in at the right place and right time to carry the miracle forward. Without them this book would never exist.

Seventh, I believe that preceding each personal and spiritual victory there must be a moment of adversity -- a literal trial of spirit. These dark times, when many fall with despair, are the real moments of triumph. I need not cite more than Winston Churchill's magnificent speech: "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

For everyone who strives for success, there must come such a time. The greatest moments of most endeavors are not usually caught on film or applauded by large, adoring crowds. These are the trophies, not the victories. They are not the same thing.

The greatest moment of the Christmas Box miracle was not the day my book became a number-one bestseller. The greatest moment (as you will read) was a deeply personal and solitary triumph of spirit -- a battle waged in no more spectacular a place than a shopping mall parking lot without another soul in sight.

Remembering that each noble cause must be preceded by a struggle enables us to better walk with courage and faith.

Eighth, I believe the most important thing that we can learn in our divine educational process is how to love. To love God and to love others. They are the same thing, really. We cannot love God without loving his children. Neither can we love God without serving his children.

A few summers ago I took my oldest daughter, Jenna, on a humanitarian mission into the jungles of Peru. After a few days of hiking and sightseeing, crocodile hunting and dining on piranha (it tastes like chicken), we set up a clinic in the jungle. Our group consisted of about twenty volunteers, mostly college students, along with two optometrists and one dentist.

My job at the clinic was to assist the eye doctors by searching through suitcases filled with used eyeglasses in an attempt to match the doctors' prescriptions. Jenna, along with another teenager, used hand puppets to teach the Quechuan natives about hygiene and sanitary practices. She also helped watch the children while their parents were being seen by the doctors.

A week and a half later, Jenna and I sat with our backpacks in the Lima airport waiting for our flight home.

"What did you learn from this?" I asked Jenna.

She said she wanted to think about it. About twelve hours later we were sitting in Chicago's O'Hare Airport when I noticed that Jenna was crying. I asked her what was wrong.

"Dad, we have so much and they have so little." Then she said something I will never forget. "I know what I've learned," she said. "We love those whom we serve."

My teenager got it. Love without service is as dead as faith without works. It is only in reaching beyond ourselves to save others that we save ourselves. As Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and a Jewish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, wrote in his book Man's Search for Meaning, "I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love."

Love is oftentimes most beautifully rendered on canvases of travail. Like the men Frankl wrote about who, despite their own starvation, shared their crusts of bread. Or like Jesus on the cross.

In relating my story, my hope is that you might see not just my journey but the possibility of your own. It may be your first step in achieving all that you desire from your life. And your own greatest destiny.

Copyright © 2001 by Richard Paul Evans

Read an Excerpt

Foreword

My sister once gave me a birthday plaque inscribed, "God made us sisters, hearts made us friends," and that inscription characterizes sisterhood as I have experienced it. And I have experienced sisterhood because my mother had six daughters. I know about those ties that bond — they can feel like velvet strips one day, braided rope the next. But most days our relationships with one another are characterized by impenetrable bonds of charity and fidelity and honesty. And when we're less than that, when we're emotionally stingy or argumentative or gossipy, and even when we're sniping at each other, we're careful to avoid the tender spots, and to not draw blood. In short, we're close. It's a closeness that, as much as I value it, I also take for granted. We're sisters after all, we share parents and history and genetic composition, so shouldn't we be close?

Except that the sets of sisters so stunningly presented by Julia Chance in the following forty-eight essays have come to know that their ties that bond didn't just happen simply because they are related. Each essay reverberates with the implicitly stated notion that these sisters are close not merely because they have the same parents. Some sisters portrayed here do not have a common blood line, nor are they bound just because they grew up sharing hair rollers, or bedrooms, or the backseat of the family car — at least one sister pair was raised in different cities — nor do they avoid controversy — one woman says emphatically that her relationship with her sister is larger and more important than any disagreement they might have. Ultimately, these sisters have at the hearts of their relationshipsthe willingness to cross great expanses — physical, emotional, even spiritual — in order to be and remain connected. In fact, it is the wanting to be close that makes these sisters so.

There's JoAnn Lee and Lynell Kollar, for whom a family arrangement meant that one girl was raised by their grandmother in New Jersey, the other lived with their parents in Texas. Yet both women describe their relationship as being richer than perhaps sisters brought up in the same bedroom. They use terms like "soul mate" and "unconditional love"; "cohabitation," they say, "has never been a prerequisite for closeness...it's more about where your heart is than where you live."

There's actor Kadeem Hardison's mother, Bethann, and her best friend, Marta Vargas. The two met as adults and were instantly fused in a friendship that rivals that of other women bound merely by genetics. They speak of their spiritual, soulful, mental connection, though most of their get-together time is spent on the phone. Yet they'll talk literally all night long if a personal drama is working itself out in either of their lives, as was the case when Marta's mother died.

There's Shirley and Lynn Hopkins, who drew on everything they knew about sisterly bonds to get them through the tragedy of a car accident in which Shirley was left with severe head trauma, comatose, and ultimately in need of prolonged and intensive rehabilitation. It was Lynn who traveled four hours every weekend to help care for her sister, talking her through her coma, being a pillar for her sister as she progressed through her rehabilitation, even taking Shirley's hand in a tender moment at a basketball game when Shirley had forgotten how to walk up steps and couldn't maneuver the bleachers; Lynne guided her, encouraging her every inch of the way.

There's even the charming story of little Yhanni James, who more than anything wants a sister but instead gets a brother, and then finds it difficult to contain her disappointment. Later, when her mother has a third child, a girl, seven-year-old Yhanni is bursting. She's remains elated even as she learns how to process conflicting emotions over the loss of attention from family members, attention that used to be hers exclusively but that has now shifted away from her and toward her baby sister, Thandi.

The women on these pages represent a variety of lifestyles and have experienced sisterhood in its many manifestations, from the heartwarming to the stark. Yet all of their lives have been enriched — in some cases even sustained — because of the ties that bind them to a sister. And in every instance it is the choosing to be close that makes these women so. They sometimes travel long distances to be together. They stretch across potential divides of rivalries or disagreements, of tragedies or nontraditional family arrangements. And it is their willingness to stretch that becomes the ties that bond, the recognition that they are truly sisters not just because of the physiology of genetic makeup, but because of their hearts wanting it to be so.

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

Copyright © 2001 by Diane McKinney-Whetstone