The Love You Save: A Memoir by Goldie Taylor (Review by Erin Woodward)

The Love You Save is candid, heart-wrenching and yet inspirational.

You’re beyond devastated at the hardships Goldie must overcome when she’s abandoned by her mother and loses her father at the tender age of 5, but those are just the tip of the iceberg. Her young age and open heart endear her to the reader; you’re always rooting for her to be able to move beyond those atrocities and make it out alive.

Goldie spends her time between her mother and her aunt and uncle’s house. While with her aunt, she’s given only the barest of necessities to survive – and she does just that. But after being raped at the age of 11 and having no one to turn to or any way to deal with this trauma herself, she falls into a dangerous spiral of depression. She eventually seeks out school and learning as a path to survival.

She uses her grandmother’s room as a sanctuary to escape the injustices of her very existence by reading away the hours between her heavy chore list. Books are her sanctuary. So many of us can relate to that, but for Goldie they are so much more and she especially loves authors James Baldwin and Toni Morrison.

My favorite line in the book is: “Grief… Is love with nowhere to go.” As a reader that devours memoirs, I was meant to read this book. I’ve done a lot of research into where she is now and how she’s still fighting for equality and peace. Her past didn’t ruin her; it made her a warrior.