Tiawana Brown releasing memoir as she awaits COVID fraud charges in Charlotte
With federal COVID-fraud allegations pending, former Charlotte councilwoman Tiawana Brown is releasing a memoir that begins with FBI agents knocking on her door.
Brown dedicated “Unbreakable” to her daughters, who are co-defendants. The trio were indicted in May and accused of falsifying loan applications to get federal pandemic relief funds and money meant for Brown’s nonprofit that was spent on a lavish birthday party and Louis Vuitton items.
Brown has maintained she is innocent.
The memoir opens with federal agents’ arrival, but “I’ve been working on my book for forever,” Brown told The Charlotte Observer in a phone interview Tuesday.
Brown, now 53, kept a journal as a 21-year-old serving four years in prison on federal fraud charges. She gave birth to her second child while serving that sentence. She wrote about the effect her incarceration had on her family and about founding Beauty After the Bars, the nonprofit meant to help keep women out of jail.
She also said she made entries while becoming the first formerly incarcerated person to serve on Charlotte’s City Council. Brown lost re-election in the September Democratic primary to Joi Mayo, who now holds the seat.
When agents knocked on her door during her term on council as District 3 representative, Brown said, she thought: “After 35 years of redemption … here we go again.” Brown said she knew at that moment that it was time to publish.
She said news of her indictment “scared the s— out of women” living at homes funded by Beauty After the Bars.
“I have to write to show people that even though a storm is coming, you don’t change who you are,” Brown said. “Your character remains the same. You continue to show love. You continue to show up, and you continue to be who God has called you to be.”
Asked if the book delves into any other parts of her criminal case beyond those first knocks and the indictment, Brown told the Observer: “I’m very intelligent. I didn’t make it this far in life being stupid. So I’m not speaking on anything [about the case] in my book. I just told you at the beginning of the conversation — and it’s a privilege to speak to me, and I want you to know that. You can write that if you like to as well — that I am writing to show people my strength.”
Brown said she is an advocate for second, third, fourth and fifth chances.
“You can get through anything in life — one day at a time, one prayer at a time — with family, love and friends that are really authentically your friends,” she said.
“Unbreakable,” published by Pure Thoughts Publishing LLC, will be released Jan. 11. Brown will soon hold book signings at her church, Charlotte’s Greater Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, and at an off-site location sometime in February for folks who don’t want to enter a faith-based environment, she said.
Then she’ll tour in Kentucky, Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Alabama, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., she said.
It would be a world tour, she said, if she had her passport.
A federal judge in May confiscated Brown and her daughters’ passports. All three have pleaded not guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
Correction: Tiawana Brown served one term on the Charlotte City Council. An earlier version of this story was incorrect.
This story was originally published January 7, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
