‘Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair’ by Hilary Giovale
Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair is a new book by Hilary Giovale (published by Green Writers Press, October 2024).
In Becoming a Good Relative, Giovale discovers her identity as a ninth-generation American settler whose ancestors benefited from grants of stolen land, the stolen lives and labor of enslaved peoples, and systemic racism. She invites readers into stories of ancestral memory, intuitive knowing, relationships with water and land, grieving, truth-telling, apology, and forgiveness.
Her journey culminates with a commitment to personal reparations. Becoming a Good Relative encourages Americans of modest income levels to engage in reparative actions and giving while also recommending practical strategies for wealth redistribution.
This memoir offers remedies for the debilitating shame that can overtake white Americans when we face our peoples’ colonial past and systemic white supremacy. With accountability to historical context, it provides insight into how racial healing for white settlers can look and feel.
Becoming a Good Relative includes stories of reclaiming European ancestral memory through ancestral languages, mythology, and songs. The appendices contain historical notes, questions for reflection, practical skills and rituals, and recommendations for further reading.
The author returns all income she receives from book sales to the Decolonizing Wealth Project and Jubilee Justice. Becoming a Good Relative is available at all major retailers, as well as independent booksellers.
Praise:
“Hilary Giovale unpacks the legacies of historical harm that continue to afflict American society and shows us a way forward toward healing. This book is for people who want to be better and do better for the sake of generations to come.” —Sharon Leslie Morgan - Founder, Our Black Ancestry and Co-Author, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade
"Readers of this book will embark on an unlearning and learning adventure - unlearning the status quo created by the harm inflicted upon Indigenous peoples by colonial systems, and learning to heal the wounds of colonialism through relationality, respect, and personal reparations." —Edgar Villanueva, Author of Decolonizing Wealth and Founder and CEO, Decolonizing Wealth Project and Liberated Capital
“Hilary Giovale models courageous exploration of truth telling, healing, and repair. This book is a must read for anyone grappling with their own relationship with cultural identity, race, and colonization.” —Kevin Eppler, Co-Founder, White Men for Racial Justice
“This is a profoundly brave book. In sharing her journey, in all its pain and revelation and imperfectness, Hilary has woven both a reckoning and a calling-home that is essential for a shared future of wellbeing and liberation.” —Joanna Levitt Cea, Co-Author of Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work
About the Author:
Hilary Giovale is a mother, writer, and community organizer who holds a Master’s Degree in Good and Sustainable Communities. She has taught improvisational dance and has served on the boards of philanthropic, human rights, and environmental organizations. Descended from the Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, and Indigenous peoples of Ancient Europe, she is a ninth-generation American settler. For most of her life these origins were obscured by whiteness.
After learning more about her ancestors’ history, Hilary began emerging from a fog of amnesia, denial, and fragmentation. For the first time, she could see a painful reality: her family’s occupation of this land has harmed Indigenous and African peoples, cultures, lands, and lifeways. With this realization, her life changed.
The inquiry ‘How can I become a good relative?’ guides Hilary’s work, including her writing, teaching, and reparative philanthropy. Divesting from settler colonialism and whiteness, she seeks to follow Indigenous and Black leadership in support of healing, mutual liberation, and equitable futures. She is the author of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair (Green Writers Press, October 2024).
Readers can connect with Hilary on Instagram.
To learn more, visit www.GoodRelative.com