The Quaking of America

An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation's Upheaval and Racial Reckoning

Resmaa Menakem

• Publisher: Central Recovery Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781949481747, 9781949481662
• eBook ISBN: 9781949481679
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnopsychology
• Index: Social Sciences

The New York Times bestselling author of My Grandmother's Hands surveys America's deteriorating democracy and offers embodied practices to help us protect ourselves and our country. 

"All of us need to read this book—and then act on it.”—Angela Rye, NPR political analyst and former CNN commentator

"Resmaa Menakem is one of our country's most gifted racial healers. His brilliant new book could not be more timely."—Michael Eric Dyson, author of Entertaining Race and Long Time Coming

In The Quaking of America, therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem takes readers through somatic processes addressing the growing threat of white-supremacist political violence.

Through the coordinated repetition of lies, anti-democratic elements in American society are working to incite mass radicalization, widespread chaos, and a collective trauma response in tens of millions of American bodies. Currently, most of us are utterly unprepared for this potential mayhem. This book can help prepare us—and possibly prevent further destruction. This preparation focuses not on strategy or politics, but on practices that can help us

Build presence and discernment in our bodies

Settle our bodies during the heat of conflict

Maintain our safety, sanity, and stability in dangerous situations

Heal our personal and collective racialized trauma

Practice embodied social action

Turn toward instead of on one another

The Quaking of America is a unique and perfectly timed guide to help us navigate our widespread upheaval and build an antiracist culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. What Is This Book?
• 2. Why a War Is Being Planned
• 3. What the War Plan Looks Like
• 4. Bodies and Logic
• 5. Your Body Is the Key
• 6. Your Body’s Six Intelligences
• 7. The Five Targets of Blame
• 8. Active, Passive, and Unwitting Complicitors
• 9. Clean Pain and Dirty Pain
• 10. Why the Coming War Will Be Racialized
• 11. What Trauma Is and Isn’t
• 12. The Five Trauma Responses
• 13. You Are Already the Enemy
• 14. The Wisdom of Your Body
• 15. Your Body Broadcasts and Receives
• 16. The Essentials of White-Body Supremacy
• 17. What Are Reps?
• 18. Two Types of Reps
• 19. How Can This Book Help Prevent a Civil War?
• 20. Racialized Trauma
• 21. The Five Anchors
• 22. Plantation Ethics
• 23. Primal Reps
• 24. White Bodies and the Energies of Race
• 25. Your Soul Nerve and Soul Muscle
• 26. Becoming a Somatic Abolitionist
• 27. Quaking
• 28. Wokeness, Allyship, and Complicity
• 29. Cultivating Resource
• 30. No Failure, Only Practice
• 31. Peril and Possibility
• 32. Once It’s Clear We’re at War
• 33. Moving Your Body into the Street
• 34. White Bodies and Hand-Wringing
• 35. When White Bodies Say, “Tell Me What to Do”
• 36. Physically Protecting Yourself and Your Family
• 37. Expect Situations, Alliances, and Relationships to Shift
• 38. Religious Groups Will Support and Attack You
• 39. Listen to Black Women
• 40. The Legacy of White-on-White Oppression
• 41. When White Bodies Deputize Other White Bodies
• 42. When White Bodies Turn on Each Other
• 43. Policing White Rage: A Life Rep for White Bodies
• 44. Living with Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Lost Battles
• 45. Creating a Living, Embodied Antiracist Culture
• 46. Emergence
• 47. The End of the War
• 48. The New Reconstruction
• 49. Y2K, COVID-19, and Somatic Abolitionism
• 50. Vital Resources and Next Steps
• Afterword: Us
• Deepening Your Experience of This Book
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author