Rita J. Bunton

Rita J. Bunton earned her B.A. in journalism from Michigan State University. Before she retired, she was public information director for Olivet College. She was the first recipient of the eponymou...

Battle Is Not Yours, The

Rita J. Bunton

This book is an inspiring true story of a life transformed, but if you did not know that it is based on actual events, you might readily believe that it is a novel, destined to be fashioned into a made-for- TV movie and promoted on talk shows. Certainly its author deserves the attention. With extraordinary effort and an abiding trust in God, Rita J. Bunton transformed her life. Instead of succumbing to heroin addiction, which appeared likely, she found the strength to change everything. She not only got out of an abusive relationship, with her four young children in hand, but she enrolled in college, earned her degree, and eventually became a newspaper reporter, writer, and public information director. Her story is both remarkable and uplifting. What makes it more amazing is that it is true.

When readers first meet Jasmine Armstead, she is a young girl. One of four children of a divorced and emotionally distant mother, growing up poor in Jackson, Michigan, she is kept in line by her grandmother. Jasmine was an honors student until high school, by the time she graduated, her grades had fallen and she was pregnant. She got married at nineteen and was a mother of four (including twins) by the age of twenty-one. Her life spiraled quickly downhill and hit bottom after seven years of heroin use. Broke, desperate, and abused, she prayed to be saved—and her life reversed its seemingly inevitable course. This is an inspiring book. Although its appeal is universal, it has particular allure for women. Portraying four generations in matrilineal relationships that are always loving, if not always warm, it vividly depicts the importance of family—for better and for worse. However, in the end, this is a story about faith: in
God, in oneself, and in redemption. It will resonate with readers long after they have closed its covers.

Reviews

"Many books have been written about growing up black in America. Rita Bunton's The Battle Is Not Yours is by far the best I have ever read at capturing what it was like to be a black working-class girl in a blue-collar Midwestern town in the 1950s and 60s. Her vivid descriptions of her first three decades touch all our senses more acutely than the best work of Malcolm X or even Alice Walker. A must- read for any outsider who wants to understand being black and female in America in this century."—Jack Lessenberry, Michigan Radio

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"Bunton gives the reader an in-depth, profound, hair- raising factual view of her life...struggles of African Americans in the 1960s in the South...as a drug addict. She returned to her roots-Bible, church, extended family- for comfort." - Multicultural Review