Memoir
Son of Birmingham: A Memoir
Birmingham Mayor Randall L. Woodfin announces his first book
There are many ways to tell a story. And, when you are in public leadership where so many people have so many varied expectations of who you should be, what you should do and how you should do it — it is nearly impossible to satisfy everyone.
So, a leader who truly represents the people they serve learns to lean into their own story, their own experience and to help others understand that their story is our story.
Mayor Randall Woodfin’s debut memoir, Son of Birmingham, is one of those stories.
Son of Birmingham is an autobiographical perspective of Mayor Woodfin’s life — technically, it is his story.
But, for everyone who has ever loved their hometown and experienced its exquisite peaks and its sidewalk-specific pain, then they will discover that Woodfin’s story is also their story.
Honestly, it is hard to make a city like Birmingham make sense to people.
Birmingham has represented — in equal measure — the best of times and the worst of times in our nation’s history. Birmingham either dominates the national consciousness or is absent from it altogether.
