Whose Reach and Grasp and Heaven?

Last week I was honored to receive a request to write a blurb for a forthcoming book. Since over the past few years I’ve asked dozens of friends and acquaintances to write blurbs for books I was publishing, I felt glad to be able to return the favor, in that illogical roundabout way the world seems to operate. Yes, I said, I’ll write the blurb.

The author of this book entitled Shut Up and Read, is someone I’ve never met: Jeannine Cook. We’d corresponded by email in July of 2024, trying to coordinate schedules. Our plan was to set up a book launch at Jeannine’s store in Philadelphia, Harriett’s Bookshop, to celebrate Accidental Anchorwoman, the memoir written by Melba Tolliver, which Book & Puppet Company published last year. October 2024 was the target for the event at Harriett’s. But somehow it slipped; the event never materialized.

Now, a year later, comes this email from Jeannine Cook’s editor, requesting a blurb. Shut Up and Read was attached as a PDF.

I remembered that back in July 2024, since I was publishing Melba Tolliver’s memoir, I’d thought to tell Jeannine that in my opinion, Jeannine too needed to be working on a memoir about her store. Of course, I’d seen stories about Harriett’s Bookshop in the trade press: you couldn’t be an indie bookseller navigating the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter rising against police brutality and not have heard about Harriett’s. So, I mentioned I thought a memoir would be good. Jeannine had responded she wasn’t sure she had the right to do a memoir, since her business had only existed a few years. I wrote back, yes, this is the moment! You can!

What I hadn’t known in July 2024 was that Jeannine Cook was at that time already under contract to write a memoir AND a novel! She was on double-deadline!

November 2025: I read Jeannine’s memoir, and, in so doing, I came to understand why the October 2024 Melba event hadn’t materialized. Jeannine is BUSY! Her life is COMPLICATED!

I loved her memoir—I read it in two days. I didn’t want my blurb to summarize the story. I slept on it. I woke in the middle of the night, and typed my blurb as a phone-message to myself. Next day, I sent it to Jeannine and she wrote me back that she loved it and I shouldn’t change a word.

It’s in the “Reviews” tab, on the book’s Harpercollins webpage: the book will be released next Spring. Here’s the blurb:

“Heroines’ journey: this book sends up a flare. Life and death are twins transcended when transgenerational wisdom inspires. Listen: leading on the bravest—ok, most dangerous—route of justice-making, freedom-taking, liberation now, that’s the voice of Ms. Harriet. Shut Up and Read guides us along her Overground Underground Railroad. Knife at throat, gun muzzle, 3am death threat, sure. But love together pours, passionate; defiant courage makes impossible desires real. Ms. Harriet says, get in trouble, bust through hate and create that promised land. It’s fun?! Shut up. Read.” - Andrew Laties, author, Rebel Bookseller, and, You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book?

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My Mom had a favorite phrase: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Heaven for?” It’s from the poet Robert Browning. I heard her say this when I was a little kid, and throughout my life. I didn’t know what it meant, back in childhood. Then, as I grew up, I began to understand it, based on its spoken context.

But it always confused me.

The grown-ups generally tell you, “Don’t let your reach exceed your grasp.” That’s a thing to say to a kid about how they should wait till they know how to do something, before they risk something hard. Because they might get hurt!

(Kids aren’t so good at following that rule.)

But my Mom’s version—“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp”—is, as I always sort of knew, an opposite grown-up opinion on the same topic. It says, you should try to do something even if you don’t know how to do it, because, you might surprise yourself and turn out to be able to get it done anyway!

For me, the confusing part was the end of the phrase: “Or what’s a Heaven for?” That seemed to mean: You’ll feel great when you get the thing done which you weren’t officially skilled enough to really be able to expect to do.

Now, both versions—“Don’t let your reach exceed your grasp” and “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp”—seem to presuppose that there are people watching you and having opinions about you and your reach and you and your grasp. Like, you’re playing a sport, and there are people shouting from the stands while you try to swing the bat or throw the ball. The “Or what’s a Heaven for?” is about the reward for doing that thing you weren’t supposedly competent enough to accomplish.

Thinking about it now: I feel like, hey, that’s obnoxious. Because: How come I even CARE about Heaven, and rewards? How come there’s someone who’s judging me and I’m all eager for them to give me a reward?

OK – I’m thinking about this now because of Jeannine Cook. She was definitely not “properly” qualified when she opened her bookstore. Instead, she did a fabulous job of inventing a completely unique thing. And she achieved so much. She affected so many people, in such a positive way.

Her reach seriously exceeded her grasp.

Is she in Heaven now? Well, she’s in Philadelphia. The trouble she endured—which she made into the material of her activism—has been real trouble, which she has really been enduring.

I guess she’s brought Heaven to Philly.