Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience

Shelia Wise Rowe

Intervarsity Press (JAN 7) Softcover $17 (192pp) 978-0-8308-4588-0

Healing Racial Trauma is an artful and ambitious examination of racism and faith.

Identifying and describing the different, constant, and overlapping impacts of racism, the text will be educational to those for whom racism’s impacts are a new topic and healing to those who face racism on a daily basis. Heartrending examples of racial oppression run throughout—some familiar, including violent tragedies from recent and historical news.

The book revisits the murders of leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. and of young people like Tamir Rice and Michael Brown. Emotional personal stories cover Rowe’s family experiences and experiences from the lives of people she knows. Such stories represent a variety of racial backgrounds, and different types of discrimination are encountered: a Japanese American family addresses the traumas of internment during the second World War; a young woman reveals how she learned to balance her mix of heritages growing up, as her ancestors were Shinnecock, Cherokee, and black.

Christian at its base, the book also draws interesting parallels between Shinnecock beliefs and Christian ones. Its personal stories cover diverse histories, showing that there are many ways of being not white in America. Similarities emerge among people’s experiences and in how each has begun to heal.

The book’s anecdotes are interspersed with ideas from scholarly texts and literature that help to explore and understand topics from fear to addiction. Bible stories are used to illustrate these themes, too, while thought-provoking questions and prayer prompts focused on healing cap each chapter. A group discussion guide ends the text.

Sensitive and powerful, Healing Racial Trauma recognizes many facets of racism in the United States and offers views of different paths to solace.