Mindfulness teacher and law professor Rhonda V. Magee (The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness) discusses her work exploring the intersections of anti-racist education, social justice, and contemplative practices. A highly practiced facilitator of mindfulness-based stress reduction, Magee draws on law and legal history to weave storytelling, poetry, analysis, and practices into how we think, act, and live better together in a rapidly changing world. In conversation with Eboni Bugg.
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“This book opens doors for all of us to better understand the conditioning that keeps us feeling so separate and apart. Rhonda Magee is a significant new voice I’ve wanted to hear for a long time—a voice both unabashedly powerful and deeply loving in looking at race and racism. Most important, Rhonda’s voice is a practical one, illuminating a path each of us can follow to a life filled with far greater awareness, connection, and peace.” —Sharon Salzberg, New York Times-bestselling author of Real Happiness
“How can we begin to explore, understand, and finally, undo the painful injustice of racism that is so deeply embedded in us? Illuminated by her work in meditation and mindfulness practice, Rhonda Magee has spent her life considering this question. Her knowledge, wisdom, sensitivity, and compassion shine through every page of The Inner Work of Racial Justice. This book should be read slowly and carefully by everyone. Do its exercises, ponder its nuances. Take it to heart—you can’t afford not to.” —Norman Fischer, founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation
“A powerful, courageous, and compelling exploration of the role of mindfulness in working toward racial justice, and of working toward racial justice as an element of mindfulness. This book is essential reading for our time.” —Joan Halifax, PhD, founder of the Upaya Zen Center
“With warmth, knowledge, and personal storytelling, Rhonda Magee offers us a path to look into the painful truths of structural racial oppression with mindfulness and compassion, which provides the necessary emotional grounding to skillfully work through the pain to generate new solutions through authentic connections to more communities. It may take generations to undo the harms of systemic racial oppression, but with this revolutionary book, Rhonda brings us many generations closer.” —Helen Weng, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco
Sponsors
Susan and Norman Colpitts
Virginia Festival of the Book staff, volunteers, partners, and attendees appreciate all of our sponsors. It is their crucial support, along with individual donors, that allows us to present the 2022 Virginia Festival of the Book almost completely free of charge. We appreciate the generous commitment from our Premier Sponsor, The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and these major sponsors: Michelle and David Baldacci, Dominion Energy, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Community Partners
We appreciate the support of our community partner for helping share information about this event: Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville
