MAMA BEAR: One Black Mother’s Fight for Her Child’s Life and Her Own (on sale September 14, 2021) is the story of Shirley’s 141-day ordeal, from entering a hospital emergency room on New Year’s morning and giving birth to her premature newborn, to taking her daughter home for the first time the following May.
 
In telling her story, written with Zelda Lockhart, Shirley shines a spotlight on the dangers Black women face during pregnancy. Black mothers are twice as likely as their white counterparts to go into labor prematurely and lose their babies—and almost four times as likely to die giving birth. Neither socioeconomic status nor access to quality healthcare seem to matter.