Media Review: 'My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and Mending Our Hearts and Bodies,' by Resmaa Menakem

Abstract

My Grandmother’s Hands addresses racialized trauma in contemporary American life, positing that our innate capacity for healing trauma lives in the bodies of individuals, and can be spread within families and through communities. Author Resmaa Menakem guides readers through a brief history of the progression and transmission of trauma from medieval Europe to America, then distills 25 years of trauma theory and research, and applies it to a thoughtful analysis of present-day racism in America. Finally, Menakem offers concrete exercises and practices designed to metabolize trauma in the bodies of three groups of Americans: Black bodies, white bodies, and police bodies.