Words of Hope, Faith Take Root

In the early morning, long before sunrise, a 28-year-old named Nina sat at home, thinking about killing herself.

At that same hour, author Iyanla Vanzant sat in an Inglewood radio studio talking to listeners about how to live.

Nina called in, Vanzant picked up the phone, and by the time it was over, Nina had been introduced to some tools for living.

“I’m focusing on healing lives and teaching people that they can heal--giving them tools to heal,” said Vanzant.

Her purpose, she said, is “to let people know that somebody cares and that they can feel better. Some people don’t know that they can feel better.”

At public appearances, Vanzant is the author people often want to hug and thank. When she speaks, people identify--and testify--said Blanche Richardson, manager of the Marcus Bookstore in Oakland and a friend of Vanzant.

“It’s like going to a church where there’s call and response. . . . There are so many other people testifying to the truth of what she’s saying.”

Vanzant has two new books out, “One Day My Soul Just Opened Up: 40 Days and 40 Nights Toward Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth” and “In the Meantime: Finding Yourself and the Love You Want,” both published by Simon & Schuster. She has spent the last week in the Los Angeles area appearing at bookstores and on college campuses.

“Some of her books we can’t keep in stock because they move so fast,” said Alice Winchester of Phenix Information Center in San Bernardino, which is sponsoring a reading today at the Court Street Bar & Grill. “We’ve had a very, very good response.”

One of Vanzant’s most popular books is “Acts of Faith,” a collection of daily meditations. The little purple book stayed on the Blackboard African American Bestsellers list for 42 months. More than 700,000 copies were printed.

Vanzant said her success is relative. “Nobody doing this work--coming from where I come from--has received the audience I’ve received.”

Her readers know well where she comes from.

Her mother died of breast cancer and leukemia when she was 2. She was raped at 9. She was a single mother at 16 and a mother of three at 21. She was married to a man who beat and berated her for years.

In the middle of the night, she heard a voice telling her to get out. Realizing that the voice came from within, she packed her bags, bundled her children against the cold and left her husband. She went back to college, then to law school, and spent three years as a public defender in Philadelphia. She became a Yoruba priestess and an ordained minister.

“I’m not telling people what to do,” Vanzant said of her work. “I’m sharing what worked for me.

“The thing I always tell my audiences all the time is that I’m just two steps ahead of you on a good day. And I might be two steps behind you on a bad day. I try not to set myself up as different or as a celebrity or special. I have a husband that can get on my nerves. I have kids that test my patience. I’ve got a cat I can’t keep off the sofa. It’s real. On a bad day, I’m reading ‘Acts of Faith.’ ”

That, said Richardson, is what readers recognize.

“We don’t get the sense that this is someone who’s done a lot of academic research and is just espousing someone else’s views,” Richardson said. “Her writing comes from the heart and the spirit, and it touches everyone who reads it.”

In “One Day My Soul Just Opened Up,” Vanzant takes readers on an inward journey. It is written as a workbook. Each day is dedicated to a particular principle: trust, honesty, truth, guilt. There are daily affirmations, questions and spaces for writing.

“I think most people think that a spiritual path or growing spiritually means that all of a sudden you’ll be able to forecast the six lotto numbers and all your bills will be paid,” she said, laughing.

“It’s not that at all. When your soul opens up, the first thing you do is cry because you realize how awesome and how resilient and how dynamic and powerful the spirit is. . . . When your soul opens up, you get clear. Crying and laughing and telling the truth is part of that clarity.”

Although some of her earlier books were targeted to a specific audience--people of color, or African American women--Vanzant’s latest two works take a broader approach.

In her conversations with Nina, the woman who called the radio station, Vanzant did what she always does: She encouraged the woman to be honest with herself, to identify her situation and work on changing it.

Vanzant spoke to Nina for an hour after the call-in program--”The Front Page” on KJLH-FM (102.3), a rhythm and blues station. The author called home to Maryland and asked one of her “prayer warriors” to pray for the woman.

“All I’m doing is planting the seeds,” Vanzant said.