Mass textile processing made my hometown of Greensboro, NC a city. That city then became a global textile powerhouse, along with all the other processing plants for tobacco, furniture, and other raw natural goods across the state.

Then, starting in my lifetime, all those factory functions went overseas and our city started to suffer from civic-inferiority complexes, which are only just starting to be rectified and fast fashion began to grow, on the backs of yet another set of people, mostly of color, globally.

Reading this book and researching its accompanying newsletter and livestream…

…has challenged me to reckon with the narratives and struggles that were fed to me as gospel (sometimes literal gospel in church) and to proudly go forth with this platform of telling the real, accurate, inclusive stories on places and how to shape them in an image of justice, true revolution, abundance, and ease.

That it’s time for me and others to think about how we shop for clothes, where we shop for clothes, who still makes them, where they make them, how they make them, and who disposes of them, especially if they don’t degrade easily in a way that’s friendly to the environment.

Finally, this is another Black voice attuned to a global issue and how a lot of what we are dealing with stems from industrial abuses past and present and how we must take control for the future.

It’s an easy, conversational read, while still being well-researched and the audiobook if you so choose is read by the author.