Recently, I did a book reading at Brownstone Books in Brooklyn, NY of my book, Repairing the Quilt of Humanity: A Metaphor for Healing and Reparation. The book uses the metaphor of a quilt to examine the ways that racism damages all of us (albeit some more than others) at the psychological, group and systemic levels. The book is my story as a white woman exploring the impact of racism both in terms of the external economic damage that impacts people of color and the internal psychological damage that impacts all of us.

The reading was a powerful illustration of the power of story telling. By telling my story, it opened a space for others to tell their stories and share their experiences. We had a full house at the reading and the discussion that followed lasted longer than the reading itself.

We have so few spaces to have open authentic discussions across race and people (white people and people of color) are hungry for this. A colleague of mine, Dr. H. Sharif Williams, and I are planning to organize some workshops to enable just this. If you are interested in participating (here in New York or elsewhere), please click here.