Alfreada Brown-kelly

The Skin I Am in Alfreada Brown-kelly

What poetic justice is contained throughout the leaves of history captured in this book! The author chronicles what at first glance seems like the vestiges of a particular journey. The book then takes a turn and proves to be quite instructive as it deals with no one's particular journey, yet, the books is about everyone's journey and maybe even the reader's. THE SKIN I AM IN is about the use of time, contentment, survival, living and love, and ends with a retreat to days past. There is a pattern in the book that engenders winnowing through troubled places as one strives to the keeping of covenant promises in the Scripture. The first theme is a treatise on time, which is reminiscent of the pilgrimage of the early Christians to Mecca, captured in the Psalms and identified as the "Songs of Ascent." This recounting of life experiences is told by those on the pilgrimage where the quest was not necessarily for a single truth but truth in the eyes of the beholder. Yet, this book, "THE SKIN I AM IN," is also on the edge of being prophetic by using metaphors for the seasons of hope throughout one's life. The windows to the soul described in the book were likened to gates in the book of Acts in the Bible. There were many gates but the metaphor here is about the man that waited for his healing at the temple gate called Beautiful. The poetry in "THE SKIN I AM IN," like the man at the temple the gate that waits on healing, waits on healing while sharing the seasons of life. The man at the gate found healing. Alfreada Brown-Kelly uses poetic beauty as she arouses our consciousness. She ends the book by giving the reader hope for a full life and leaves the reader with and a deft appreciation of this inspired work, "THE SKIN I AM IN." -Bertha L. Davis, PhD, RN, ANEF, FAAN