A New Sound: Weathering the Storm by Dr. Tiffany G. Townsend
THE LATEST INSTALLATION OF
New Book Releases
BY SHAUNDALE RÉNĀ
COPYRIGHT 2026. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Weathering the Storm: Navigating the Anti-Social Justice Wave is the new release from Broadleaf Books, by Tiffany G. Townsend, PhD. The book grabbed my attention because I actually considered the title for a book of a different genre nearly three decades ago. However, when looking at the cover, I felt a calm like this book had simply arrived—at the right time, for the right reasons.
Here’s why:
When we consider “resonance,” words like tone, echo, meaning, significance, character and reveberation follow. When thinking of “emergence,” we see words like beginning, development, rise, advent and arrival. And when combined? Resonance and Emergence become, in the simplest form, “new sound.”
The author opens with a November 4, 2008 flashback. “O-BA-MA! O-ba-ma!” she writes of the evening when Barak and Michelle Obama were newly elected as President and First Lady of these United “Fakes” of America (my words, not hers). In her words, “Change [had] come to America, and it was a true celebration!”
Indeed, a new sound resonated and had emerged.
The story continues to address systemic issues with topics like Stereotypes and Microaggressions, Shifting Tokenism, Beyond Violence and Intimidation, Solidarity as Resistance, Reclaiming Our Narratives and From Gatekeeping to Gateway. My immediate favorite was Stereotypes and Microaggressions, only because I enjoy books that teach me something. Out the gate, Dr. Townsend introduced words I’d not seen or heard before—like stereotype threats, which include microinsults, microassaults and microprotections. We have indeed been heard.
According to Townsend, a stereotype threat refers to the severe anxiety or stress that some experience in situations where they fear confirming negative stereotypes about their social group. To put it bluntly … when would-be normal folks are categorized.
She writes:
Categories are not a problem in and of themselves… They help us make sense of the world and organize all that we experience as we go through daily life. The problem arises when we can no longer appreciate the uniqueness within the category, and we assume all members of the category are the same. That is when a category turns into a stereotype.
There you have it. These categories then create the shifting “tokenism” narrative the author addresses through the term “tokenism Negro.” And we all understand the connotation of this: Uncle Tom, Carlton Banks, the one Black kid in the non-POC friend group … Yeah, we know it well. She uses this to explain the “if one of them can be successful, then all of them can be successful” idea that non-marginalized groups tend to have when identifying their token.
I appreciated that Dr. Townsend started each chapter by affirming Black authors and activists like W.E.B. DuBois, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Baldwin. She leveraged her ability to pull from voices of old and crescendo into something new—voices that reverberated. I also liked that while she opened with a mention of President Obama’s victory, she opted to close with a full-on display of his genius in a call to action that speaks to education’s role in charting a path to progress. Charting her own journey, she shares her family’s oral history through her great-great-grandfather, Lewis Hollingsworth—born enslaved in North Carolina in 1834. Lewis was literate and mastered carpentry and drafting, which he used to support the work of the slave owner. However, Lewis was secretly paid for his work in gold coins (you’ll have to read to get the rest of the story).
By including this piece of history, as well as the lineage of her other great-grandfather, the author challenges readers in the space of education as a privilege and asks the question, “Can you imagine how different my ancestors’ trajectory might have been if they never learned to read?”
I say dare we never forget.
To do so would squander time and opportunities we cannot afford to lose—just as this current administration is undoing advances gained over the last 50 years.
So when we question the existence of a new sound, or the validity of a new sound, and what this new sound hopes to accomplish, may we take the time to listen from a place of knowing that nothing is as it seems, and plenty remains to be seen in a world where navigating the anti-social justice wave is a daily reckoning.
Weathering the Storm by Tiffany G. Townsend speaks to being prepared to go the distance in life, in liberty and—to some degree—in love (it’s a cultural thing!). There are thin lines to be drawn between stereotypes and tokenisms, between violence and intimidation, between resistance and reclaiming our narratives and between gatekeeping our own educational “can-do.”
This book takes readers on an experience that opens the soul and mind to various teachings—both social and spiritual. Giving voice to personal experiences told to bring depth to social justice dialogues, Weathering the Storm is the sound of resonance and emergence right now.
Dr. Tiffany G. Townsend is President of CORE Perspectives, LLC and former Chief Diversity Officer at Purdue University Global and Augusta University. Her work appears in numerous scientific journals and media outlets.
/ / / /
Shaundale Rénā (@iShaundale) is a multi-award-winning freelance developmental editor specializing in romantic comedy, historical, contemporary and women’s fiction, and nonfiction self-help and memoir. With six international awards under her belt, Shaundale has collaborated with imprints like Adams Media/Simon & Schuster and Lake Union Publishing/Amazon Publishing on bestsellers like Self-Care for Black Women and Scarlet Carnation. Her most successful self-published clients, Kimberlee Yolanda Williams and Zariah L. Banks, have won multiple awards for their work, Dear White Woman, Please Come Home and Beauty Beheld, respectively. Shaundale’s passion for connecting the big picture of a story shines through in her work with indie and traditionally published authors alike. When she’s not editing for clients and writing under her alias (@StonyRhodes), she writes the New Releases column for KIZA BlackLit Magazine and book reviews for the African American Literature Book Club (AALBC). Learn more about Shaundale and her work in the literary arts by visiting www.ShaundaleRena.com.