A Review of Amena Brown’s “How to Fix a Broken Record”
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No, Amena Brown’s How to Fix a Broken Record isn’t a title that’s meant to be taken literally. So for you vinyl enthusiasts who have come to this page looking for advice on how to cure your record after it has been warped by direct sunlight or shattered into pieces … sorry. What this book is, instead, is a kind of spiritual memoir divided into themes such as home, being single, growing up and more, that revolve around how the author managed to get through challenges in her own life. Brown, it turns out, is a spoken word poet, and so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that How to Fix a Broken Record has oodles of fire and passion, sass and wit.
Brown, in fact, at times reminds me of an African American version of Rachel Held Evans, not in terms of spiritual backgrounds or beliefs, say, but more that they both possess a chatty, friendly writing style. Brown speaks in the latter pages of getting writing advice about making herself be more invisible (which I can only imagine as being problematic for a black woman) and let more of what she was writing about seep through by letting herself step back. I’m glad to say that, in this book, Brown doesn’t become so invisible that her writing takes on a detached quality. You still see her personality, and the stories are about her, but, in some ways, they also feel universal.
Whether Brown is writing about being a tall woman with big feet or holding out for marriage before having sex, I’m sure that a lot of people — women, especially — will find her personal essays to speak to them somehow. It helps that Brown taps into broader pop culture with her writing: she begins each section with a small write-up of a particularly influential album by artists such as Beyoncé, John Coltrane and Kanye West and how that album shaped what she’s about to write about. Given the book’s subtitle, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t more to be said about music in this book. It’s clear that music is a passion of Brown’s (as it is mine — in fact, I’m just now getting back into vinyl collecting after having to sell my records off two years ago to pay rent) and it’s a shame that she doesn’t go into depth. However, that would probably go against the Christian message of the book and what Brown is doing.
The book itself is universal as Brown talks about God and Jesus pretty tangentially, inserting a comment here or there about how they influenced her life and leanings. Otherwise, this is more a Christian-themed book than anything else — one about looking for love and then establishing a family, even though it appears that Brown and her husband (for the time being, at least) are unable to have children. Sometimes the book is laugh out loud funny — such as when a potential suitor asks Brown if the fact that she’s holding out to marriage for sex would have a bad impact on her uterus. Other times, the book is pensive, such as when Brown talks about visiting Africa and wondering where her ancestors are from. (A fact that was unknown to me as a Canadian white guy is that many African Americans don’t know their family trees beyond the fourth or fifth generation back because, of course, slave owners didn’t keep family records of their possessions. Slaves were only identified by race, gender and age.)
I have to say that, even though I think this is a book more geared toward women (despite the very hipster white male friendly book title), I enjoyed it immensely. If I could find any fault with it, I do think the section on looking for love (sometimes in the wrong places) was a little long, but, come to think of it, this is probably a very major concern for women, regardless of ethnicity, so it probably needs to be as long as it is. And, yes, sometimes the book can be a little on the vague side in terms of details it reveals, but that’s probably to protect individuals such as her husband. (No need for a book to be the root cause of a divorce, after all.)
Circling back to my enjoyment of the book, what I really appreciated about it is that it felt real. At no point does Brown get up on a soapbox and preach about a certain religion and how righteous it is — in fact, she even writes about a period in her life when she didn’t attend church — and the book feels real and honest, a one-on-one conversation that she’s having with a stranger, the reader. It’s too bad that you can’t interact with the book in a way that would be keeping with this dialogue (granted, these reviews that I write are meant to be a dialogue) because Brown even includes in the book epistles she’s written to herself and others. Clearly, How to Fix a Broken Record is the start of a dialogue with the reader that the reader, alas, can’t answer back — though I do suppose there is always social media.
At the end of the day, How to Fix a Broken Record is a fun, breezy and informative book. It’s a window into one woman’s world — a seemingly everyday, ordinary woman who has no claim on celebrity or specialness other than with her penmanship talents. I liked the chapter at the end about having a listening room in her house where she invites friends over for record spinning parties. I felt that, in that sense, the author knew me a little because if I had a house, I’m pretty sure I’d be doing the exact same thing! So, if you’re a Christian with any sort of hankering towards popular music, I would say that How to Fix a Broken Record is an enthusiastically phenomenal read. It is a remarkable account of the life of a Christian woman, and I wouldn’t change a word. If your needle is skipping a groove, read this and learn from it. How to Fix a Broken Record crackles with wit and soul, and is a refreshingly mature look at faith in today’s pop culture saturated world — one that’s well worth your time if you’re white or black, man or woman.
Amena Brown’s How to Fix a Broken Record: Thoughts on Vinyl Records, Awkward Relationships, and Learning to Be Myself was published by Zondervan on November 7, 2017.
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