WHITE PICKET FENCES

WHITE PICKET FENCES is a Gentle Invitation into the Challenging Topic of Privilege.

The notion that some might have it better than others, for no good reason, offends our sensibilities. Yet, until we talk about privilege, we'll never fully understand it or find our way forward.

Amy Julia Becker welcomes us into her life, from the charm of her privileged southern childhood to her adult experience in the northeast, and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She shows how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects, and how it can prevent us from loving our neighbors well.

White Picket Fences invites us to respond to privilege with generosity, humility, and hope. It opens us to questions we are afraid to ask, so that we can walk further from fear and closer to love, in all its fragile and mysterious possibilities.


Amy Julia Becker is the author of White Picket Fences: Turning toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege (NavPress, 2018), Small Talk: Learning From My Children About What Matters Most (Zondervan, 2014), A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny (Bethany, 2011), named one of the Top Ten Religion Books of the Year by Publisher's Weekly, and Penelope Ayers: A Memoir (2008).
A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, Becker blogs regularly for Christianity Today at Thin Places. Her essays about faith, family, and disability have appeared on the Motherlode blog of The New York Times, USA Today, ABCNews.com, Theatlantic.com, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, The Huffington Post, and Parents.com. Amy Julia lives with her husband Peter and three children, Penny, William, and Marilee in western CT.