Power: A Woman’s Guide to Living and Leading Without Apology

Executive coach Nekvapil (The Gift of Asking) sets out an impassioned if scattered guide to embracing personal power. After growing up as a Black foster child in a white suburban neighborhood and being rejected in her teens by Black peers who told her she “talked white,” she realized, “If I don’t belong in a white world, and I don’t belong in a Black world, I’m going to belong to myself.” Doing so involved investigating how racism and misogyny had stymied her agency, and prioritizing such values as presence (meditation helped the author carve out “a space for [me] to be in touch with [my] power in a mindful way”) and wisdom (which helped her to confront challenges by keeping past experience and future direction in mind). Nekvapil is at her best when painstakingly capturing moments in which power structures asserted themselves in her life, as in childhood when the frequently bullied author played a cruel trick on a neighbor girl because “I needed someone else to feel like shit for once.” The outing, though, suffers from a fragmentary structure, which confines such topics as patriarchy to three- or four-page bursts and dispenses piecemeal advice, allowing glimmers of insight but precluding a more cohesive narrative. The confidence-starved will find some value, but may be left wanting more to sink their teeth into. (Sept.)