Author Feature: Jacquelyn Ogorchukwu Iyamah
Jacquelyn Ogorchukwu Iyamah is an author, designer, educator, and founder of Making the Body a Home, an e-learning platform with resources for those seeking healing from racial trauma.
Her upcoming book, Racial Wellness, takes a seldom-used holistic approach to all aspects of working through and relieving the effects of racial trauma. Iyamah’s work reflects on how these traumas have consequences physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Her reflections on the constant demand for people of color to resist in part come from her extensive background in social welfare and her work in dismantling the “white default.”
Pre-order Racial Wellness here 💞
FEMINIST caught up with Jacquelyn Ogorchukwu Iyamah to dive deeper into her methodology in her writings and teachings and just what her new book has to offer the BIPOC community.
Q: What word most resonates with you this year?
JOI: Play. This year I've really been prioritizing leaning into joy, adventure, unseriousness, and pleasure. It has helped me reconnect with my inner child.
Q: How would you describe yourself?
JOI: I am a designer, writer and visionary who works to ensure that communities of color can be well — in essence, I am a cultural worker.
Q: What does being a cultural worker look like for you?
JOI: My work as a cultural worker manifests through Making the Body a Home, a platform I created where I design liberatory objects such as decor and homeware. It manifests through e-learning coursework I created that helps Black, Indigenous, and people of color and white people unpack their internalized racism. And it manifests through my upcoming book, Racial Wellness which aims to help communities of color heal from racial trauma.
Q: What inspired and/or prompted you to use a holistic lens when working with the effects of racial trauma?
JOI: Racism is a systemic issue - that means it impacts us individually, interpersonally and institutionally. When someone is trying to work through their trauma and we only focus on what they can do to heal as an individual, we are doing them a huge disservice. An individual can only do so much in the face of systemic oppression. Our healing techniques must include interpersonal and institutional strategies as well in order to truly be revolutionary.
Q: Who is this book for?
JOI: This book is for the people who have experienced racial trauma but don’t know where to put their pain, its for the parents who want to understand how to protect their children, it’s for the teachers who want to create safer learning environments for students, its for the therapists who want to better support their clients — it’s for all of us who want to create a society where people of color can truly experience what it means to be well.
Q: What are you most hoping your readers take away from your new book, whether it be a thought, feeling, concept, or something else?
JOI: My hope is that the concepts explored within this book arm Black, Indigenous, and people of color with in-depth knowledge about the racial abuse they experience and strategies to combat this abuse on individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels. When you give abuse a name, you bring it out from its hiding place. You’re able to observe it, analyze it, and explore how to disempower it.
Q: Where can readers get your book?
JOI: The book comes out on November 7th 2023 and is currently available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Bookshop.org, Hudson Booksellers, Powell's, Target, and Walmart.
(P.S. Pre-orders are really important for newer authors to help showcase to publishers, retailers, and bookstores that there is interest in their work!)
Q: You refer to racism as “the multifaceted abuser”; can you tell us more?
JOI: There are different types of abuse that someone can experience. Physical, emotional, verbal, mental, financial and more. The reason why I refer to racism as the multifaceted abuser is because it can and does harm Black, Indigenous, and people of color in all of these ways. When we begin to view racism as a form of abuse, it becomes easier to understand the deep impact it has.
Q: Your upcoming book, Racial Wellness, is split into five sections - emotional wellness, mental wellness, physical wellness, spiritual wellness, and our interconnected wellness - what inspired you to format the book as such?
JOI: Many conversations on racism do not highlight the various ways in which racism abuses communities of color. By creating these clear categories, it highlights the fact that our experiences are multifaceted. Additionally, I believe that these sections will make it easier for people to truly understand, unpack, and process the different forms of abuse they may be experiencing as they move through society.
Q: What do you feel is unique and important about highlighting how to heal from racial trauma?
JOI: Health, wellness, and psychology fields have spent a lot of time, energy, and resources into understanding how to help people who are experiencing other forms of trauma. But when it comes to addressing trauma created by systemic forms of oppression such as racism — we are failing. By creating this book, I hope to change that. We need more offerings centered on healing racial trauma so that communities of color can have a soft landing place to rest, restore, and resist.
Q: What are some topics covered in the book?
JOI: The book delves deeply into topics such as racial gaslighting, racial fear, racial apathy, racial triangulation, racial violence, racial microaggressions, racial othering and more!
Q: What does being a feminist mean to you?
JOI: To me being a feminist is an intersectional practice. It is about not just centering issues of gender, but also issues of race, class, sexuality, and more to ensure that all women’s experiences are being amplified and addressed.
