The Wind at My Back: Resilience, Grace, and Other Gifts from My Mentor Raven Wilkinson

Bestseller and renowned ballerina Copeland (Bunheads) recounts her friendship with and mentoring by the late Raven Wilkinson (1935–2018), who in 1955 became “the first Black woman to receive a contract with a major ballet company” upon signing with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. For her part, Copeland blazed a path to unprecedented prominence, joining the American Ballet Theater’s studio company after only four years of training and later becoming the ABT’s first Black female principal dancer. Copeland draws strength from Wilkinson’s perseverance through harrowing experiences of racism, including having Klansmen storm the stage at a performance in Montgomery and leaving the Ballet Russe and American ballet companies at large when her colleagues revealed their discriminatory beliefs toward her. Met with resistance to her outspokenness about anti-Blackness in dance throughout her career, Copeland celebrates her mentor’s wisdom as she shoulders the burdens and thrills of her historic career, and aims to inspire other dancers of color who face similar barriers as they pursue their passions (“Listening to [Wilkinson], I was reminded that... I was setting other Black women free to dance, to dream big, to ‘fly.’ ”). The strength that Copeland found in Wilkinson is moving, and she renders it gracefully throughout. This is an inspiring and insightful account. Agent: Steve Troha, Folio Literary Management. (Nov.)