Good friends Bonds that change us and the world

Vulchi, only recently graduated from Princeton, has accomplished a lot: multiple books, a racial-literacy nonprofit, and a widely viewed TED Talk. But, vitally, Vulchi did not do these on her own, working with close friend and collaborator Winona Guo in both professional and personal pursuits. At the crux of Good Friends, Vulchi, this time writing alone, aims to fully affirm the possibilities when we move beyond the notion of individuality and embrace the connections and, indeed, love that can come in the boundless context of a friend. Vulchi examines the myriad permutations of friendship. Profiled here are friends of pleasure or utility, mentors, long-distance friends, and even those you've lost touch with entirely. Throughout, Vulchi uses poet and activist June Jordan as the exemplar of how a commitment to the power of friends can shape one's life. Jordan, whose network included Maya Angelou and Malcolm X, built much of her life around the care and keeping of friendship, seeing these relationships as driving forces for both her own activism and her personal development. A deft mix of manual, treatise, and anthem, Good Friends will leave readers feeling activated and content. Vulchi's voice is a balm in an age often marked by loneliness and disconnection.

Vulchi (Tell Me Who You Are), cofounder of the racial literacy nonprofit CHOOSE, crafts a humane and vulnerable paean to friendship. While many see friendships as a part of life that fades in the face of more pressing concerns like careers and family, Vulchi believes friendship is at the root of "what it means to be human." In her attempt to create "a new vocabulary" of friendship, Vulchi explicates, warts and all, her lifelong association with Winona Gao, a collaborator, occasional roommate, and "platonic life partner." The author also draws on ideas about friendship from Khalil Gibran, Virginia Woolf, and Aristotle, whose notion of a "friendship of virtue"--which he called "the highest form of love"--underpins the book. Elsewhere, Vulchi's cataloging of famous friendships provides some marvelous images, like Toni Morrison and Fran Lebowitz waiting in line for a movie, Emerson and Thoreau strolling together around Walden Pond, or Madonna flaunting her closeness to actor Sandra Bernhard at a concert that activist June Jordan also happened to be attending with her own friends. Jordan, in particular, emerges as the book's intellectual center: an outspoken feminist icon who maintained friendships with Angela Davis and Adrienne Rich (the latter relationship, at times, full of conflict), and whose life, in Vulchi's telling, serves as an important rebuke to the American myth of self-reliance. It's an incisive, elegant take on what it means to be a friend. (Apr.)