Friends from the Beginning

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY OCT 25, 2021

AT&T national sales manager Johnson-Batiste debuts with a loving if somewhat superficial account of her friendship with Vice President Kamala Harris and the "vibrant, forward-thinking, and diverse" community of 1960s and '70s Berkeley, Calif., where they grew up. The two girls met when they were brought together by their "intelligent, tough, ambitious" mothers, Doris and Shyamala. Other influential adults in the Berkeley scene that the families shared included Mary Lewis, who developed the Black Studies program at San Francisco State University and showed Harris how to "ask clear, direct questions and then genuinely listen to the responses," and day care owner Regina Shelton, whose Bible was one of two Harris swore on when she became vice president. Johnson-Batiste credits the adults in her community with teaching children Black history and politics; introducing them to the works of James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and other Black writers and activists; and preparing them to succeed as adults. In high school, Harris and her sister moved to Montreal for Shyamala's work, but she and Johnson-Batiste lived in the same condominium building in the 1990s and have stayed close through marriages and careers. "As soon as we're back together," she writes, "the time away from each other seems irrelevant." Though the nostalgia and appreciation are genuine, Johnson-Batiste's portrait of Harris is long on platitudes and short on insight. This frothy confection lacks substance.