A collage of a medical gastrointestinal diagram, with green plants and pink and white flowers growing around the system. There are drops of red blood.
Image credit: “Darmflora” by Martine Mooijenkind

Editors’ note: This article is from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s winter 2023 issue, “Love as Social Order: How Do We Build a World Based in Love?”

In this conversation with Cyndi Suarez, NPQ’s president and editor in chief, and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, professor of English education at Teachers College, Columbia University, the two leaders talk about what it takes for Black women to rise in systems that seek to suppress their progress and success.

 Cyndi Suarez: Who is Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz?

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz: Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz. Seriously, I’m still learning what I’m capable of and who I am. I do know that Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is a little Black girl from the South Bronx, who at some point believed all the things that people said about Black people in the South Bronx—all of these things that now, as an adult, I’m trying to resolve through the work of racial literacy.

In 2018, I developed the Racial Literacy Development Model, or RLDM, which was initially a tool for educators but which I have since expanded to be useful for any individual or group committed to developing racial literacy. Part of this work has involved pulling out one of the key components (or steps) of this model, Archaeology of Self, because it was a component that naturally rose to the top for me after writing my two books of poetry—which I consider artifacts of my archaeological dig around love, intimacy, and self-knowledge. I thought: if writing these two books healed me, perhaps they can heal others, and that I should invite others to their own healing through writing—which is how and why I teach. I trademarked the concept, because a friend who is the executive director of one of the largest teacher organizations in the country told me that it was a powerful concept that should be trademarked—and of course, I immediately followed her advice.

So I think that I’m someone who has been fortunate in following a path in education and using it as a way to figure out who I want to become, still. I am someone. I love myself. I’m grateful for what I’ve accomplished. And yet I do feel like I’m still evolving. And what’s powerful is that what I study is what’s helping me evolve.

“Are we in some ways marginalized? Absolutely. Sometimes, the smarter you are, or the more innovative you are, the more marginalized you are.”

CS: That’s cool. I identify with that. I watched your TEDx Talk [“Truth, Love, & Racial Literacy”], and you spoke about how Michel Foucault said that to know the self is to write1 —that when you’re really learning, and really writing, you come to know yourself. For me, this has certainly been the case: writing has transformed me in such a deep way.

What has been your experience as a Black woman in corporate America and education?

YSR: There are many books that have been written about this—particularly at the corporate level. I think of the book by Ella Bell Smith and Stella Nkomo [Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity].2 And I think about the work of Wendi Williams, provost and senior vice president, Fielding Graduate University, California, who has a podcast called She (Been) Ready! and who just came out with a book about Black women in the academy [Black Women at Work: On Refusal and Recovery].3 Those two texts, and many in between, have really captured our story through multiple Black women.

Are we in some ways marginalized? Absolutely. Sometimes, the smarter you are, or the more innovative you are, the more marginalized you are.

Ideas are commodities. And the more your ideas sell, the more prospective students find you attractive and the more likely they will come to the college and study with you. Students equal tuition dollars; tuition dollars equal more money for the institution. So if your ideas (read research and personality) draw students, then you are “worth” something to the university. And yes, all of this may happen, but colleges and universities are still hostile places for Black women.

It is the same with corporate: I was a very successful marketing and promotion executive who brought in millions for the companies I worked for, but I still experienced marginality and racism. I was “valuable” to them but still was not treated fairly. They really don’t want you to go beyond a certain ceiling, and when you puncture it, you get pushed to the side. I’ve experienced that. So in the case of corporate, I always found myself on teams that never really received the big payouts, the bonuses.

I’ve been in advertising and marketing and promotion for the New York Times and for Business Week. I was also the first Black marketing director for one of the NYU schools, the School of Continuing and Professional Studies—believe it or not, as early as ’98. This was after being at the New York Times for seven and a half years and at Business Week for one and a half years. And what I found throughout that entire time, particularly at Business Week and the New York Times, was that I was always on these startup teams. In retrospect, it was an extraction of my ideas—I never got the credit, and I was always in a position of scraping things together, building a particular client base, and not getting the big money. And when I became too—I guess—creative at Business Week, I remember my boss saying to me, “So what is it? You want my job?” I’d been there six months, Cyndi.

CS: I identify with that.

YSR: And I want to hear your story! That’s why I mentioned those books—because for decades, Black women, Latinx women, mixed-race women, non-White-presenting women have experienced this. I remember saying to my boss, “No, I don’t want your job. I want my job. I want to do my job!” Eventually, within a year, I left that place, because it was just not emotionally or creatively safe.

CS: How do you bring your whole self to work each day within the compromise of academia and the politics? Someone recently said to me, “There’s no real model for women of color to be authentic in leadership.” So, how are you able to be authentic? Or are you able to be authentic?

YSR: Oh, Sis, yes. I know who I am and I know whose I am. I am a student of history and I know the power of my ancestors. We basically built this country. I will tell you: being a professor—that was never my goal. So, in so many ways, I’m like an accidental academic who showed up.

“So, in some ways, I taught myself my position. I didn’t really get development or training in my work, and I knew that I had to show up differently.”

I grew up in the Bronx. I didn’t expect even to be in corporate America, and I expected less to be here at my alma mater. And since I am here, that requires a certain level of responsibility for me to show up as my true self, so that others can hopefully have permission or be inspired to show up as their true selves. I do not want to come into a space and try to emulate Whiteness when Whiteness often means the death of myself and the lack of recognition of my people. Why would I want to aspire to that?

I was that way in corporate—hard lessons, absolutely. Were there moments when I thought Whiteness was best? Of course. That’s how we’re all socialized. But when I met my first mentor, Leroy Baylor (who happened to be a member of the Nation of Islam; and I am not of Islam tradition but the Nation of Islam is a little different in that members recognize the Prophet Muhammad but with a Blackness ideology), he helped me to come into my Black consciousness within the corporate setting I was in at the time. He had become a manager at the New York Times Book Review. Well, that and the New York Times Magazine were the bread and butter of that newspaper. The New York Times Book Review brought in millions of dollars—and he was in management there. And I saw him move in his authentic self, and that gave me inspiration.

CS: How do you do it?

YSR: How? I worked really hard, meaning there was more expected of me because they, of course, expected me to fail or did not expect me to be as good as my White counterparts. What I realized is that I was often (and this is in quotes) “better” than they were—because I had to dig a little bit deeper into the client base, I had to be a bit more creative. Where they might come into a marketing meeting with surface information, I would maybe go back five, six, seven years. Where was that advertiser before the New York Times? What did they advertise? What new products are they thinking about? So, in some ways, I taught myself my position. I didn’t really get development or training in my work, and I knew that I had to show up differently.

And when you know you’re doing something extra and extraordinary, even if you’re not recognized? There were so many meetings where I would say something and…crickets—and then my White counterpart would say it and it’s the best idea ever. I would see White women who didn’t have my level of education go out on maternity leave and come back and be promoted, because it was understood they were raising White children and needed money. And here I am, working on a master’s degree, doing the work, and not getting promoted. So I mean, all of that. And I didn’t have the language for it then, Cyndi. I knew something was off—but I also knew my Bronx roots. When I was working for the New York Times, I was still living in the Bronx. So I’m going to this corporate America place, and then I’m coming back to my home. That kept me grounded.

CS: I think what I’m hearing in what you’re saying, too, is that—at least where you are now—there’s a certain freedom that you claim for yourself. A certain trust, perhaps, that you’re going to be okay. And so you almost do it without needing the external validation. So when it comes, you’re like, “Nice to have—but if I was waiting on that, I wouldn’t have gotten there.” So it seems like there’s a lot of internal work that you’ve done to trust that you’re going to be okay, even if you’re not doing what people expect you to do.

YSR: Right, yes.

CS: I think for a lot of people it takes time to get there. You’ve done the internal work for so long, and there comes a point where you trust the universe even if you don’t trust the systems you’re in—and you know you’re going to be okay.

YSR: And I don’t trust systems. Cyndi, you’re brilliant. I have never had someone give back to me what I feel or how I feel I have been living. And I didn’t take any course in it. I would have to turn to my mother, who grew up in the segregated South, and my father, who grew up on Barbados—both of whom had very different ideologies about Blackness and independence. And them coming together, meeting in a place like Harlem, moving to a place like the Bronx, living in the housing projects, growing up during a crack epidemic…all of who I am and what was not expected of me out in the world but yet what was expected of me in my household is really what gave me that confidence. In terms of out in the world—war on drugs, you’re poor, the Bronx is the poorest congressional district in terms of funding, the Bronx has the highest asthma rates nationally—there were really no expectations. But in my household I have a mother who went back to school to get her high school degree at 47, and a father who was a licensed pharmacist when he came here but couldn’t get work. The two of them together convinced me and my siblings that we could do anything, because no one out there expected anything—so you may as well go for broke!

CS: Right. So interesting. In an article I wrote earlier this year, “Leadership Is Voice,”4  I quote Terence Nance, the creator of a show I love, Random Acts of Flyness, who talks in an interview about how he was able to have a show like that on HBO. He says that everything he does on this plane, he first has to do on a different plane, and then it manifests on this plane. If he tried to do it first on this plane, he would never be able to do it. And I so identify with that, right?

YSR: Talking like spiritual?

CS: Yes! You not only are self-defined on this plane but also know that there’s a higher plane that’s more powerful than all these other people.

YSR: Especially when it’s ancestral. A lot of the ancestral DNA does come from struggle, comes from remembering. I think when we choose to tap into the memory of what our ancestors have imparted—and like you said, Cyndi, operate on a level that is spiritual, which is very important to me—then, yeah, you’re right, we just kind of show up. And in some ways, that’s why they call it “Black Girl Magic.” But we’re just being. It’s nothing magical really—we’re just excellent and expect excellence of ourselves, and always have. The imposing outside world has written a different narrative—or has thrown obstacles in our spaces, in our places, that we can’t be excellent. But internally, I think almost genetically in some ways, this has been passed on to us. And those of us who can tap into it do manifest amazing things—like you writing the power book and having that heuristic of inviting other people into their power.

“And as we start rising, what do they do? They use government policy to say, Oh, ban these books or ban this other thing. You can’t ban a people.”

CS: Yeah, I love that. My family in Puerto Rico are artists. My uncle, who is the person my mom grew up with, is the national artist. He created the vejigante mask. So coming from a Black family of artists, I have a legacy of creativity. And I’ve seen my family love Blackness and be upholders of the culture of Blackness in Puerto Rico. So yes, our legacies. And we are lucky enough to have those legacies—you’re right. It’s like, You can’t tell me anything.

YSR: What are you going to tell me, actually? My people built this place. They created math. I’m not taking away from other people, but I know that most of the everyday things that we use, including the cell phone, including the computer that we’re talking on, are inventions by Black people. And what’s amazing is that we go through a school system that seeks to erase us, actually seeks to beat us down—and yet still, we rise. Not without casualties. But this whole failure of a system tries to keep us from rising to understanding who we are. This is how much White supremacy, those in power, will go—to the extent that they have to fail an entire system just to make sure that we never know who we are and that we don’t rise. And as we start rising, what do they do? They use government policy to say, Oh, ban these books or ban this other thing. You can’t ban a people. We’re not doing that.

CS: It’s a lot of effort. Effort to keep that evolution from happening. You talk about “critical humility” [in your work], which I love. I don’t use that term, exactly; but at NPQ I talk to staff a lot about how we have to balance confidence with humility. You have to have a lot of confidence to speak the truth, yes—and a lot of humility to be able to be open to different truths and to always keep yourself grounded. I’d love for you to say a little bit about how you think about critical humility. But further, it’s easy to understand how White people need that—but I think, too, that we’re in a time when, at least in our area of work, there’s a lot of dominant power there as well. There’s a lot that’s great about the social movements of the time that we’re living in, and there’s also a lot going on that’s just like the power that we’re trying to fight. And it’s kind of tied up with this language of empowerment, right? So, empowerment sometimes can be individual, and the way that it shows up in the work can actually be destructive. I wonder if you could talk about what critical humility means for people of color when one is also trying to become empowered.

“If I don’t enter a space with humility, that means I’m cutting off my learning. If I cut off my learning, how far can I really go in my own aspirations, in my own flourishing?”

YSR: That is so brilliant. I feel like you have the answer there, because the humility—the recognition that you have limitations to your own learning and understanding—it’s two trains running. It has to be in tandem. You have to first of all have a certain amount of confidence to be able to move in the world and to share the things that you know so that you can inspire others toward it. And at the same time, you have to be humble enough to know when you’re in the presence of a teacher. Usually, for me, those are youth or students in my class. I always tell the story of Dr. Angel Acosta.5 He showed up as my student, and I came to understand him to be a teacher.

It’s also the humility of remembering what our ancestors went through—for example, the Civil Rights movement. So, to never be arrogant enough to think that what I have done has gotten me here alone. And forgetting the dogs, and the murders, and the fires, and the burning crosses that my ancestors had to experience—when I know my history, Cyndi, that does put me, I hope, in a space of humility, of constantly having to remember what my ancestors went through and to learn from their strategies as I try to move forward.

So I think it’s inherent for those of us who claim to be learners—and particularly learners of our own history, and even learners of those who are living with us, whether it be Beyoncé or Constance Baker Motley—to ask ourselves, Are we humble enough to realize that we have all of these teachers around us and that we need them to even shape who we are? I cannot teach without recognizing that a teacher, or multiple teachers, will show up as my student/students.

That’s just my orientation, Cyndi. Coming to you, I have to be humble. I’m learning so much from you in the short time that we’re talking. I’m taking notes, I’m writing things down. If I don’t enter a space with humility, that means I’m cutting off my learning. If I cut off my learning, how far can I really go in my own aspirations, in my own flourishing? I don’t know if that makes sense, but intertwined for me is this idea of knowing who you are, whose you are, and your own power that you step into—and being humble. Because arrogance and pride goeth before a fall. That’s the scripture. Whatever religion you ascribe to, it’s true. When you get too hoity and high—boom! the fall is right there behind you. Or right in front of you.

CS: Okay, I want to dig into this a little bit more, because I like what you said about recognizing a teacher. I feel like part of what happens a lot right now in social change work—from what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing from the field—is this desire for everything to be equal. And sometimes what happens is, you don’t recognize teachers. And I think about how my spiritual teacher has a spiritual teacher. So there’s something about being both, where claiming one’s power is concerned. I do the same thing that you’re doing when I talk to people. For me, recognizing a teacher is recognizing something different that I hadn’t heard before. It’s being attracted to difference as opposed to sameness. And I don’t think a lot of us are attracted to difference. I think a lot of us seek sameness. I talk about that in my book, actually, and I think it comes from Audre Lorde…or is it bell hooks?6

YSR: bell. She talks about the beloved community, and difference, and not assigning it to privilege.

CS: Yes, I think it’s bell who I quoted. In my research, what I found is that it’s difference that can trigger power dynamics—and the perception of difference and our attitudes toward difference. So what I realized when I was writing my book is that I’ve always been attracted to difference, and I didn’t even think about that as a positionality that’s not the norm. And so I wonder, when you talk about recognizing a teacher, what do you mean by that?

YSR: I’ve had a few students who have shown up as my teacher, but Angel Acosta was the most recent and, I think, the most profound, because he led me into meditation. He led me into healing-centered work by observing my work through a healing-centered lens and inviting me into this role, or recognition, of being a healer. That had a profound impact on me. And when I think about his orientation in class, it was one of the listener. I would be sharing these concepts and would see him deeply listening, and then he’d come back with a question that allowed me self-reflection—and allowed the students self-reflection, as well. It almost became like he and I were the only ones in the room. That’s when I saw something different, Cyndi. There was something else going on.

“Am I wrong? I imagine that I am sometimes. But I also want to say from a spiritual perspective that oftentimes things come to me in dreams. I’ve come to understand that my dreams are powerful.”

So for me, when my students show up as teachers, it is often that—to use your words—they are making me think differently. They are challenging me. They are also holding the things that I am offering and sharing as possible knowledge for them. It really is a reciprocal act. And that has been embodied in my relationship with Angel: I continue to be his student, he continues to call me his teacher. And there’s a humility in that relationship. Because there are times when I’m speaking and Angel knows it’s time to listen; there are times when he’s speaking and I know it’s time to listen. It’s not scripted. I say it is spiritual, for sure—because I’ve opened myself up to him spiritually, also, so he’s able to say things to me that other people are not able to.

CS: I think what you’re saying is important, because some people come at you and try to give you something different that you know is not good for you. So there’s something there, with somebody offering it to you in a way that you can feel does something to your energy, where maybe it grows. How do you tell the difference between somebody who offers us something different that’s beneficial versus not?

YSR: It’s embodied, for me. And often it is not so much in the delivery, because the delivery can be soft and loving. But we know when it’s manipulative—you know if it’s self-serving for that person. It depends on where that person is and on how deeply you know them. So it’s an embodied feeling. It’s also cognitive. And I trust my body—I’ve come to trust my body—and on a spiritual level, I’m an empath. I was always wondering, Why do I cry when other people are crying? Why am I laughing when other people are joyful? Why do I feel sad or depressed when people who are close to me feel sad or depressed? So I trust myself as an empathetic person to know that my body is giving me a signal. And more and more, I’ve been learning to pay attention to that. That’s how I know. Am I wrong? I imagine that I am sometimes. But I also want to say from a spiritual perspective that oftentimes things come to me in dreams. I’ve come to understand that my dreams are powerful. All of the images done by an artist for my book Love from the Vortex came to me in a dream.7 And to have been able to articulate what came to me for someone else to create with their own hands and mind relates to that humility we were discussing.

CS: I so identify with that as well. When I wrote my book, I sat down and meditated. And I asked for the framework to appear to me. And I just sat there, and then it came. And then I built on that. And it just kept coming. And the whole process was ecstatic.

And I understand what you’re saying about the felt experience, too, because we don’t think about that a lot in the work. I talk about this in my book, as well. As humans, we know what’s real through our pheromones—our smell hormones tell the truth, right? They cannot lie. When you feel when someone is telling you something that they’re being manipulative, there’s a dissonance that you feel versus an openness and a “yes.” In theater improv, there is an exercise, “block or accept.” Those are the two interactions that you can have when you’re interacting with somebody. You can either accept what they’re saying or you can block it. And everything you do is block or accept. And sometimes that happens without even thinking—your body blocks it. Especially if you’re embodied, your body might block it before you know why. That happens to me, where I’ll feel something off, and I’ll think, What is going on that I feel this? And then I backtrack and realize what it is.

YSR: Yes, yes, yes. Thank you for that validation. Because we have to trust our bodies.

“I think that in education, we tend to be in silos. Particularly as a high school teacher and a college teacher, everything is about a course or your content area, and there’s really not a lot of interdisciplinary work or integration, right? So I try to think about everything that is taught in school as a literacy.”

CS: Well, it’s really interesting to hear, because everything that you said resonates. And I think that part of what I’m looking to deal with this next year is to explore how Black women can be authentic in leadership, and how we are being authentic in leadership, and how to create a new narrative about it.

YSR: There is a scholar and professor, Sondra Perl, who wrote about “felt sense.”8 She wrote in the area of composition and rhetoric. I used to use her work in my class on writing nonfiction. I would get students to engage with touching. For example, foods they grew up with. I would ask them to bring those foods to class, to touch the food, write memories around the food. So when you touch that mango, for example, what is the sensorial effect that it has in the body, and then what can come out of that? What you were just saying reminded me of Perl’s work on felt sense, and how that seemed to be such a foreign concept in the field of composition and rhetoric when it came out—and it became such a big idea. She really had a run with her work in the ’80s and ’90s, because no one had talked about writing in the way she did. And now, in the field that I’m in, for the last five or six years people have been talking about embodied literacies.

CS: That’s amazing. I love to hear you using the term literacies. Can you say a little bit about that? It seems like it’s a term that describes different ways of being.

YSR: Thank you for saying that. I think that in education, we tend to be in silos. Particularly as a high school teacher and a college teacher, everything is about a course or your content area, and there’s really not a lot of interdisciplinary work or integration, right? So I try to think about everything that is taught in school as a literacy. And there are multiple literacies. Healing-centered education? That’s a literacy—there’s a language, there’s a way of being around that. Math is a literacy, English—language arts—is a literacy, science is a literacy, critical thinking is a literacy. If we look at it this way, as I do, we’re trying to become literate beings. Being literate means that there’s some understanding. There’s also some practice to it; it’s not just theoretical.

So, it just seems more open to me to look at it like this. And it’s not hierarchical. Because you know, in the academy, including in K–12, we want to prioritize math and science and put it above English, above art—especially above the arts. But the arts remind us that we’re human! And yet it’s math and science that we want to prioritize and sell as a bill of goods to kids. As in, “If you’re a great mathematician or scientist, then you can make a lot of money, you can advance the world.” When we really look at it, though, art has always allowed us to have difficult conversations, has always advanced understanding. People turn to artists. James Baldwin said that it was the artist’s responsibility to make commentary on the world. I want equality among the literacies!

“White supremacy and racism are the status quo that creates fear, hierarchy, inhumanity, and all of those things that people hold on to unless they do the self-work and dislodge themselves from it.”

CS: I love that. When you were saying that, it’s exactly what I was thinking about. I imagine literacy as a different concept that allows us to move through all these forms and not get caught up—because there are social developmental aspects of that, and there are people who are teachers, and in the literacies, it’s almost like a weaving through. That’s what I’m getting from this. You talked about racial literacy. And you don’t call it this, but also love as a literacy. Everything you’re saying now makes me think we need a part two to this conversation.

YSR: I love it. I’m so grateful for your brain, for your heart, for your creativity, your way of being. I see you, and I honor you, and I want to learn from you. And yes, love is a literacy, like everything else. And we especially need this literacy in schools—because part of the crisis is that the children are not being loved the way teachers would love their biological or foster children. And I’ve seen love manifest through curriculum—a curriculum that invites kids to learn about their own identity, to learn about from whence they came, to (as the writer and professor Robin Kelley would say) “freedom dream” a world for themselves.9 That is a curriculum of love, a curriculum of human flourishing—because ultimately, school is for bringing people out of darkness into light and hopefully creating the global citizenry that we want. So you cannot have a disdain or distaste or disrespect for those children if they’re going to flourish.

And that’s why I say critical love, because I know not everyone’s gonna be, “Oh, I love you like I love my son!” But if there’s a critical love, a profound and ethical commitment to children—that kind of love? If you know that it is an ethical commitment to offer them a particular education that will allow them to flourish? Then love them that way. And that is not the love that we see, Cyndi, in schools. There is no ethical commitment to children. Not writ large, for the most part. Because White supremacy and racism are the status quo that creates fear, hierarchy, inhumanity, and all of those things that people hold on to unless they do the self-work and dislodge themselves from it.

CS: I would actually say that it’s not just schools. I think I would even say it’s social change work. I would say we’re at a critical point where we’re trying to build in a society based on fighting and based on a culture of aggression. And that’s not how we build it. So I would say a literacy of love is very critical.

YSR: Yes!

CS: It’s so funny that you’re saying this, because I’m contributing an article on love for this edition of the magazine. bell hooks talks about Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving, in her talk on love.10 And when I read his book, I saw that he offers a framework for love. Not romantic love, but the kind of ethical love that you’re talking about.

YSR: I need that book. Thank you for that. I will be ordering that and your book. Thank you for teaching me. Thank you for this time, Cyndi. I’m better for it—better in the sense that my synapses are sparking!

CS: Me, too! I feel the same way. After I met you, I said, “What is it about her?” It’s that you just come with this heart and this love. So thank you for embodying that, because it’s not common, and I really appreciate that.

YSR: Cyndi, I appreciate you. And let me just end with the gratitude that I have for this interview and for your interest.

 

Notes

  1. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, “Truth, Love, & Racial Literacy,” TEDxPenn Talk, September 15, 2022, YouTube video, 15:02, youtube.com/watch?v=-V_GdpVR6NI; and see Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972).
  2. Ella J. Bell Smith and Stella M. Nkomo, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2001).
  3. Wendi S. Williams, She (Been) Ready! The Podcast, spotify.com/show/3n9OqZO6OG0UHbFHZz2UNY; and Wendi S. Williams, Black Women at Work: On Refusal and Recovery (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2023).
  4. Cyndi Suarez, “Leadership Is Voice,” Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine 30, 1 (Spring 2023): 90–95.
  5. See the work of Angel Acosta and the Acosta Institute, www.drangelacosta.com.
  6. See Cyndi Suarez, The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics (Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2018).
  7. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems (Kaleidoscope Vibrations, LLC, 2020).
  8. Sondra Perl, Felt Sense: Writing with the Body (London, UK: Heinemann, 2004).
  9. Robin G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).
  10. bell hooks, All about Love: New Visions (New York: William Morrow and Company, 2000); and Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, 50th anniversary (1956; repr., New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006).