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Imagine Freedom

Transforming Pain into Political and Spiritual Power

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A social activist, journalist, public theologian, and international speaker who has become a powerful and brilliant voice of her generation offers a bold path to liberation and healing for people of African descent struggling in the shadows of the American Dream.

The United States is at a critical juncture in its history. Not since the 1960s has the nation been so racially divided. White supremacy remains America's Achilles' heel—a moral failure that haunts us and holds us back from being the great nation we profess. For centuries, people of African descent have endured unimaginable hatred and discrimination which has manifested in pain and trauma passed from generation to generation. To break free from this historical cycle of suffering and be truly free at last, Black and brown people must reimagine ourselves, our communities, this country, and our relationship to Africa.

Weaving storytelling, socioeconomic analysis, and cultural criticism with the spiritual and political threads of liberation theology and Pan Africanism, Imagine Freedom empowers us to begin the difficult but necessary work of decolonizing our minds and overcoming the lies we have been told about ourselves for centuries. Sobering and inspiring, filled with despair and hope, Rahiel Tesfamariam dares us to see the world through a larger historical and global lens— to understand how our quests for freedom and healing are intrinsically connected to our past, present, and future. By widening our vision, we discover new ways of imagining self, community, nation, and world, and most importantly, a new way to achieve the freedom that has been too long denied.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 29, 2024
      Journalist and theologian Tesfamariam debuts with a bold vision for Black millennials living in Africa and across the diaspora. Grounding her analysis in liberation theology and Pan-Africanism, she argues that, to “break free” from the control of racist systems and cycles of violence, young Black people must work to “decolonize” their minds and hearts, a process that can be achieved through a reimagining of community, especially a closer relationship between Africans and African Americans, as well as other Black diaspora communities. Much of her focus centers around a return to privileging the communal rather than the individual, with biting critiques of the ways in which popular culture promotes a harmful individualism. In her view, celebrity obsession feeds capitalism and “toxic productivity”; social media is “white supremacy’s media arm” (though she recognizes that it also plays a significant role in activism); and hip-hop, while a powerful venue for Black expression, leans too hard into materialism and misogyny. Drawing on her life story as a dual citizen and resident of both Eritrea and the South Bronx (she narrates her family’s involvement in freedom fights in Eritrea), the author urges Black Americans to learn more about and connect with those living in Africa. Tesfamariam’s prose blends rigorous research befitting her academic background, the emotional punch of autobiography, and the raw impact of preaching. This has the power to move readers.

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  • English

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