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A special author talk with Prentis Hemphill and Dr. Marc Lamont Hill.
Join the Library and Politics and Prose Bookstore for a conversation with writer Prentis Hemphill about their new book What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. In conversation with Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Hemphill will share from this new life-affirming framework for healing our bodies, minds, and souls.
Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing, and a limited number will be given away courtesy of the DC Public Library Foundation.
As we emerge from the past few years of collective upheaval, are we ready to face the complexities of our time with joy, authenticity, and connection? Now more than ever, we must learn to heal ourselves, connect with one another, and embody our values. In this revolutionary book, Prentis Hemphill shows us how.
What It Takes to Heal asserts that the principles of embodiment—the recognition of our body’s sensations and habits, and the beliefs that inform them—are critical to lasting healing and change. Hemphill, an expert embodiment practitioner, therapist, and activist who has partnered with Brené Brown, Tarana Burke, and Esther Perel, among others, shows us that we don’t have to carry our emotional burdens alone. Hemphill demonstrates a future in which healing is done in community, weaving together stories from their own experience as a trauma survivor with clinical accounts and lessons learned from their time as a social movement architect. They ask, “What would it do to movements, to our society and culture, to have the principles of healing at the very center? And what does it do to have healing at the center of every structure and everything we create?”
In this life-affirming framework for the way forward, Hemphill shows us how to heal our bodies, minds, and souls—to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to break down the doors of disconnection and take the necessary risks to reshape our world toward justice.
Prentis Hemphill (They/Them) is unearthing the connections between healing, community accountability and our most inspired visions for social transformation. Prentis is a therapist, somatics teacher and facilitator, political organizer, writer and the founder of The Embodiment Institute. For over 10 years, Prentis has been working with individuals and organizations during their most challenging moments of change; navigating leadership transitions, conflict, and realigning practice with values. All of this Prentis does through an embodied approach, ensuring that our intentions and ideas can be lived out and practiced in our lives and through our bodies.
Before founding The Embodiment Institute, Prentis was the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network and a lead somatics teacher with generative somatics, an organization committed to bringing politicized somatics to movement building, and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), a group dedicated to rebuilding Black movement infrastructure, for the past seven years. Prentis holds a M.A. in Clinical Psychology and has worked in low cost mental health clinics offering therapeutic services to marginalized people. In 2016, Prentis was awarded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Soma Award for community work inspired by Buddhist thought.
Prentis’ work has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Shondaland. Prentis is a contributor to The Politics of Trauma by Staci K. Haines, as well as You are Your Best Thing edited by Brené Brown and Tarana Burke, and Holding Change by adrienne maree brown. Prentis is the host and creator of the popular podcast, Finding Our Way entering its third season in 2022. Finding Our Way entered the iTunes Top 100 podcasts chart in its first week and has over 450k downloads to date.
Fundamentally their work is to disrupt the complacency and comfort of mainstream healing and therapeutic models and infuse what we know of justice, repair, and accountability into our deepest work of transformation. Their belief is that the reclamation of feeling and relationship makes room for justice in our lives and in our world. Prentis currently lives on a small farm in Durham, NC with their partner, Kasha, their child, and two dogs, on land first loved and stewarded by the Saponi people and near where Prentis’ ancestors first arrived to Turtle Island.
Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is one of the leading intellectual voices in the country.
He is currently the host of BET News, The Grio, Al Jazeera UpFront, and the Coffee & Books podcast. An award-winning journalist, Dr. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Hill is a Presidential Professor of Anthropology and Urban Education at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Prior to that, he held positions at Morehouse College, Temple University, and Columbia University.
Since his days as a youth in Philadelphia, Dr. Hill has been a social justice activist and organizer. He has worked on campaigns to end the death penalty, abolish prisons, and release numerous political prisoners. Dr. Hill has also worked in solidarity with human rights movements around the world. He is the founder and director of The People’s Education Center in Philadelphia, as well as the owner of Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Author Talk |
