The March issue of B.L.A.C. (Black Life, Arts & Culture) Magazine offers a review of My Blue Suede Shoes.

“My Blue Suede Shoes might sound like it’s about fashion,” writes reviewer Kalyn Risker, “but this book tackles quite a different topic. It is a collection of four novellas that explore family violence. In each, the introduction of blue shoes marks the beginning of the transformation of the receiver.”

Risker herself is an abuse survivor and activist who founded Detroit’s Sisters Acquiring Financial Empowerment (NewSafeStart.org). And while Risker feels the stories in My Blue Suede Shoes resolve too quickly and sometimes lack the harsh realism that haunts actual abuse victims, she agrees that the book “has the potential to be used to spark engaging discussions about family violence.”

This, of course, is the crux of our Sister4Sister empowerment series. Indeed, we couldn’t have said it better. According to Risker, our fiction will “hopefully lead to solutions and healing for victims, abusers and the community at large.”

To read the whole review, CLICK HERE.

EXCERPT FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH TARESSA STOVALL, Co-AUTHOR OF “My Blue Suede Shoes”

Empress Chi – What inspired you to write about violence and abuse?

TaRessa – We know it is prevalent. All four of us (authors in this anthology) are activists in our communities and could easily agree that it needed to be address. Violence affects everyone in the community – the children in the family and society at large as well. The stories focus on the cycle of abuse that gets embedded in a culture and becomes normal. There’s so much abuse – it seems it’s increasing.

Empress Chi – Did you do research, or write from general observation, or from something you saw in your personal life?

TaRessa – My story was assigned to me by the editor, Tracy Price-Thompson. Tracy said, “TaRessa, I want you to write about a woman who beats her man.” My first thought was, “That doesn’t happen, who cares?” But the writer in me liked the challenge. I hit Google and started learning and talking to people. I learned that female-on-male violence is just as common as the opposite, but it’s not reported. We know that women don’t kill their partners nearly as often, and because of the physical difference, the effects aren’t always as devastating.

My father was a batterer – he didn’t batter our family but he battered the wife that he eventually married. But I was familiar with the vibe of abuse. And he was emotionally and verbally abusive with everybody.

We couldn’t name it back then, but the energy of it was there, and the fallout was there. I made up my mind at a young age that no guy would ever hit me.

And I had two friends growing up who said to me with a straight face that if a guy doesn’t hit you, he doesn’t love you. We argued for years over that. But for them, it was one of the Ten Commandments. It’s a popular concept. That has stayed with me.

In the Chris Brown- Rihanna story – it came out that both of them had been in homes where the women were beaten. It was normal behavior in their families of origin. I think it’s important that when we look at these problems, we look at the root causes.

To hear the complete interview, CLICK HERE.

(This story first appeared in the 

To Desiree Cooper, a pair of blue suede shoes means more than fancy footwear or rock ‘n’ roll. The West Bloomfield author and former Detroit Free Press columnist joins three other female authors in releasing their fictional anthology “My Blue Suede Shoes” in late March. According to Cooper, each of the anthology’s four stories deals with themes of domestic violence and abuse, which are instigated by both men and women. Her contribution “Breakin’ it Down” is about a TV talk show host who abuses her 7-year-old daughter.

Cooper said fiction makes it easier to approach tough topics. “It’s easier when you’re talking about a character in a book,” she said. “People see themselves or someone that they know.” Writing a novella is different from writing a newspaper column because the former can be lengthier, and that means there is more room to work with the complexities of a narrative, Cooper said.

She said her story, like the others in the anthology, uses a pair of blue suede shoes as a symbol of awareness about domestic violence. And each story offers a path of escape from the female protagonists’ times of trouble – even if that doesn’t always happen in real life.

 ”We did want to write from the point of view that there is hope,” Cooper said.

“My Blue Suede Shoes” is the second book of the four coauthors’ Sister 4 Sister Empowerment Series.

Cooper said she learned about her co-authors through writing groups and networking relationships. She said she was probably the last person brought aboard the project.

“The four of us have never all been in the same room together,” she said.

Cooper is not the only participant from Michigan. Elizabeth Atkins of Detroit said her story “The Wrong Side of Mr. Right” is about a woman who realizes that her apparently perfect fiancé turns out to be anything but, as his emotional abuse escalates to physical violence.

For instance, he exerts controlling behavior and belittles her appearance, clothing style and eating habits.

“She needs to get away from him as soon as possible,” Atkins said. “It’s so easy to get caught up in the romance and excitement of it that you really don’t want to notice those red flags.” Atkins said she has written more than a dozen books, and she explained that she creates realistic characters by drawing upon her journalism experience at The Detroit News and Fox 2 News. “It’s really easy for me, just by observing people and reading news all the time and watching interviews,” she said.

She hopes that her contribution to “My Blue Suede Shoes” will help women empower themselves with courage and knowledge. “It takes awareness and a plan,” she said.

Authors Tracy Price-Thompson, TaRessa Stovall, Elizabeth Atkins and Desiree Cooper will release “My Blue Suede Shoes” March 29.

To order your copy now, CLICK HERE.

You can reach Staff Writer Eric Czarnik at eczarnik@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1058.

My Blue Suede Shoes seeks to shed light on various forms of abuse in relationships, and to heal these hurts by focusing on the root cause of the abuser’s behavior and having him or her take responsibility for instituting the necessary self-change.

Whether it be child abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse or emotional abuse, domestic violence in any of its many manifestations is simply wrong, and as a people we must acknowledge it when we detect it in our communities, and then take active steps to assist the victims in obtaining the help they need to remove themselves from relationships that cause them harm.

But help mustn’t only be provided for the victims of abuse. Many cases of domestic violence are perpetrated by those who have also been abused themselves. Causing pain to others thus becomes a vicious cycle, one that is difficult to break without intensive intervention and assistance.

In this second volume of our Sister-4-Sister Empowerment Series, we not only seek to illustrate various aspects of violence and abuse, we also strive to understand the motives behind the behavior and to find methods of eliminating the abuser’s need to inflict pain on others. It is our hope that the stories we’ve penned for this important volume of fiction are eye-opening and thought provoking in ways that are beneficial to you in your daily life.

So, as you go about your lives, may each of you place an arm of protection around your sisters and brothers in need, while praying for them the same safety, comfort, happiness, and protection that you seek for yourselves. May you be blessed with the utmost peace and balance, and as you navigate the harrowing roads to self-awareness and determination with CC, Zana, Charmaigne, and Monique…please…if you run across a sister who’s in trouble, don’t turn your back on her. Empower her! Be a Sister 4 your Sister. Share a copy of this book, and give her a pair of blue suede shoes!

Peace and balance, Tracy and TaRessa