Through the coordinated repetition of lies, anti-democratic elements in American society are working to incite mass radicalization, widespread chaos, and a collective trauma response in tens of millions of American bodies. Currently, most of us are utterly unprepared for this potential mayhem. This book can help prepare us—and possibly prevent further destruction. In The Quaking of America, therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem takes readers through somatic processes addressing the growing threat of white-supremacist political violence.
This preparation focuses not on strategy or politics, but on practices that can help us:
This preparation focuses not on strategy or politics, but on practices that can help us:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies.
Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans.
This 12-month practicebook is intended to be a companion piece to the New York Times Best Selling book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.
This practicebook includes questions about each month and the subsequent reading assignments, a summary of important points of each month and the subsequent reading assignments, body practices to ground you and help you recognize your own reflexive reactions/activation, and further resources at the end. Use the questions and answers as somatic elicitation to constantly read and re-read and soul-scribe on.
NOTE: This practicebook is intended to be completed communally, in groups of at least three. Please choose the version best-suited to your communal body grouping, Bodies of Culture, Black Bodies, or White Bodies.