Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience - Paperback

by Sheila Wise Rowe (Author), Soong-Chan Rah (Foreword by), Sheila Wise Rowe (Author)

Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award - Multicultural
Christianity Today Book Award - Christian Living/Discipleship Award
Publishers Weekly starred review

"People of color have endured traumatic histories and almost daily assaults on our dignity. We have prayed about racism, been in denial, or acted out in anger, but we have not known how to individually or collectively pursue healing from the racial trauma.

As a child, Sheila Wise Rowe was bused across town to a majority white school, where she experienced the racist lie that one group is superior to all others. This lie continues to be perpetuated today by the action or inaction of the government, media, viral videos, churches, and within families of origin. In contrast, Scripture declares that we are all fearfully and wonderfully made.

Rowe, a professional counselor, exposes the symptoms of racial trauma to lead readers to a place of freedom from the past and new life for the future. In each chapter, she includes an interview with a person of color to explore how we experience and resolve racial trauma. With Rowe as a reliable guide who has both been on the journey and shown others the way forward, you will find a safe pathway to resilience.

Author Biography

Sheila Wise Rowe (Tufts University, Cambridge College, M.Ed.) is a truth-teller who writes about faith and emotional healing. She advocates for the dignity, rights, and healing of abuse and racial trauma survivors and offers training and support to them and also emerging and established leaders. Sheila has lived in the United States; Paris, France; and Johannesburg, South Africa. For over twenty-five years she's been a counselor, educator, writer, spiritual director, and speaker. She's a member of the Community Ethics Committee of Harvard Medical School, a resource for its teaching hospitals. Sheila is a member of Entrusted Women, Spiritual Directors of Color, and Redbud Writers Guild. Her book Healing Racial Trauma was awarded a 2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award, Christianity Today Book Award, and a Publishers Weekly starred review. Her other books include Young, Gifted, and Black; Healing Leadership Trauma (co-authored with her husband, Nicholas Rowe); and Seeds of Racial Healing.

Rev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah (ThM, Harvard; DMin, Gordon-Conwell; ThD, Duke) is Robert B. Munger Professor of Evangelism and Church Renewal at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books including The Next Evangelicalism, Many Colors, and Prophetic Lament, and he is the co-author of Unsettling Truths. Rah has extensive experience in cross-cultural preaching and has been a main stage speaker at the Urbana Student Missions Conference, the Congress on Urban Ministry, the Urban Youth Workers Institute Conference, the CCDA National Conference, the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary National Preaching Conference, the Fuller Missiology Conference, the Justice Conference, and Verge, Catalyst, and Calvin Worship Conferences.