Unbound summary

When she was just seven years old, Tarana Burke was raped. She’d been outside playing with some friends near her home in the Bronx, in New York City, when an older boy took her by the hand and led her into an abandoned building. It was getting dark, and Burke was afraid to be going so far from home, but she felt like she had to go along with him. He ordered her to lie down on the cold floor, and then raped her. Afterward, he dropped her off at her apartment building, and she went upstairs to where her mom and stepfather were waiting. 

Here’s the key message: At a very young age, Burke’s life was shattered by a sexual assault.

One evening when she was a kid, Burke was washing the dishes. She got lost in her thoughts as she dreamily washed cups with a dishrag, soaping first inside each mug, and then along the rim as her mother had taught her to. She tried to rinse the rag, but it just produced more and more soapy suds. Suddenly, Burke had an irresistible urge to taste the soap. Tentatively, she let a drop of soapy dishwater land on her tongue.

Just then, she heard her mother screaming her name. Her mother screamed that she used the dishcloth to clean filthy pots and kill roaches. And then she asked a question that Burke would never forget: “Is that what you are? A dirty, nasty, used-up dishrag?” Tears streamed down Burke’s face. She was shocked at her mother’s rage. But, even more than that, she was ashamed that her mother seemed to have guessed exactly how bad she was. 

Burke’s grandfather watched his beloved granddaughter’s religious fervor with increasing alarm. Born into a West Indian family, he himself had been raised as a Catholic. But when he was abused while living at a Catholic boys’ home, he left the church. He still had serious reservations about the church, and how it had treated Black people throughout its history. He decided that he needed to give Burke an education that would make her look at her religious community more critically. 

He took her to the Liberation Bookstore in Harlem, and bought her two books about the history of the church and how it had treated Black people in America. Burke read them quickly, and then asked for more. One book at a time, her radicalization had begun.

Sometimes the people who have the most influence over your life are the ones you’ve never even met. They’re the people who give you a glimpse of other worlds through the books they write.

While Burke’s high school was violent and chaotic, she found refuge in her honors classes. She’d always been smart, with strong academic abilities. In the advanced classes she constantly scored good grades on exams, and her teachers appreciated her inquisitiveness and engagement. Her favorite class of all was honors English.

After all the fights and suspensions in Burke’s first year of high school, her mother had had enough. She decided to transfer Burke, after only one year, to another public school with a good academic reputation. 

Burke had another chance at reinvention, and the chance to plunge into her studies, without having to spend so much energy on fighting or defending herself. At her new school, she joined the track team and found a good group of friends. 

It’s impossible to overemphasize how influential Rose Sanders and the 21C organization would become in Burke’s life. When she got back to New York, Burke founded a chapter of 21C at her high school. There were local groups all over the country, and they all met together at weekend workshops and summer camps. 

When she finished high school, 21C again intervened to change her path. Burke’s guidance counselor had suggested she go to community college, despite her potential and high grades. Her mother seemed completely uninterested in anything she did. But Rose Sanders insisted she must go to university. She pulled strings to get Burke into the University of Alabama, all expenses paid.

When Burke found out she was pregnant, she was terrified that she would have a daughter. Her whole life she’d felt like her mother had shamed her, and failed to protect her when she needed it. 

From swapping notes with her friends, Burke had realized that Black women in her community experienced compounding shame that perpetuated abuse. Her own mother had grown up with a deep shame about the abuse she had experienced, but hadn’t had the tools to deal with it. So she projected those same feelings onto Burke. Burke was scared that if she in turn had a daughter, she’d be similarly incapable of protecting her from the kinds of abuse Burke herself had experienced in the world. 

When seven-year-old Kaia came to Burke crying and telling her that a man had “messed with me,” it felt like history was repeating itself.

A group of men had been hanging around backstage at a concert that Burke was organizing. One of them, Malik, was like a surrogate son to Rose Sanders. But as soon as he arrived, he started causing trouble. Burke had him thrown out, but was too busy with the preparations to notice that he’d come back in. It turned out that Malik had started harassing Kaia, rubbing up against the child and whispering that he had something to “show her.” 

Right at the beginning of her activist work for 21C, Burke organized a youth leadership camp. At the camp, she formed a special connection with a girl called Heaven. Heaven was very confrontational and angry. But Burke recognized that, behind the tough facade, Heaven was very vulnerable. So she did her best to connect with the girl during camp.

But when Heaven actually came to her for help, Burke ended up failing her. Heaven told Burke that she had been sexually abused, and asked for help. But this was too close to home for Burke, who hadn’t yet processed her own trauma. So she shut Heaven down, and told her to go and speak to someone else.