New York Times Bestselling Author
Resmaa Menakem is a healer, a longtime therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in the healing of racialized trauma. He is also the founder of the Cultural Somatics Institute, a cultural trauma navigator, and a communal provocateur and coach. Resmaa is best known as the author of the New York Times bestseller My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, and as the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied antiracist practice of living and culture building.
For ten years, Resmaa co-hosted a radio show with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on KMOJ-FM in Minneapolis. He also hosted his own show, “Resmaa in the Morning,” on KMOJ, and made appearances on both The Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil. He has served as the director of counseling services for Tubman Family Alliance; the behavioral health director for African American Family Services in Minneapolis; a domestic violence counselor for Wilder Foundation; and, from 2011 to 2013, as a community care counselor for civilian contractors in Afghanistan.
The author’s latest book is The Quaking of America: An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation’s Upheaval and Racial Reckoning. In the new handbook, Resmaa shares somatic practices that address the growing threat of white-supremacist political violence. His preparations focus on mental and emotional practices that can center the body, maintain safety and sanity, and help readers turn toward each other rather than on one another. Of the new volume, Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility) raved, “This is a book that will wake you up, excite, and terrify you. Resmaa Menakem is a visionary, and his work is absolutely essential for antiracist practice.”
