I’m exploring book titles for healing from the trauma of lifelong exposure to racism and sexual harassment. During summer 2020, when the protests for the murder of Breonna Taylor were in full effect as COVID-19 ravaged the world and quarantine snatched businesses, jobs, housing, and food, white society was coddled with book recommendations for how to be anti-racist.
While white supremacy was being soothed with books, slogan tees and coffee mugs by the cozy fireplace of self-care…my head was pounding with migraines since around 2017. My blood pressure would rise dangerously, my chest felt pinched at times, insomnia gripped me through the night, and fits of thrashing had me punching a hole into a hollow door with the heel of my hand. The older I get, the less I cry and the more I SCREAM. There is societal empathy for girls and women who internalize their pain with eating disorders or self harm, but an angry woman is to be feared.
I wondered what books were available for those of us who EXPERIENCED racism and the subsequent effects of such stress and trauma. I searched my own feelings and remembered Harry Belefonte’s recollections of Martin Luther King Jr. discussing how anger is a very important tool. See the Roland Martin Reports interview with Harry Belefonte on YouTube. Yes, I am an angry Black woman and justifiably so, but too many times my emotions have been criminalized or villainized against me. I have since channeled that rage into productivity in the form of lawsuits (D-1-GN-20-007414, Travis County, TX, Civil District Court) and artwork, like my Spellbook series.
Here are a few books in my shopping cart at Barnes and Noble, which totals over $100, and this is not a sponsored post. There are no click through links here. Perhaps these titles will help other Black men and women navigate this powerful energy called anger because anger is a valid response.
