Luma Book Club

Luma Book Club

This is a time of seismic shift, and yet also one of opportunity.

Luma Yoga is a community center operating on principles of inclusion, compassion, and, yes, reflection, but make no mistake – also of action.

The first step in effective action is gaining knowledge. To this end, Luma is hosting a book club on the topic of racism and social justice issues.

So, You Want to Talk About Race? Well, then, let’s start with… “So you Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo

The reading groups will be held remotely (for now) over Zoom Thursday nights 7:00PM-8:15PM, starting Thursday July 16th covering chapters 1-5 of So you Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo.

The purpose of the groups is to learn the endless shapes oppression can take in the world, to recognize our own biases within ourselves, and to move from discomfort to action in support of Black and Non-White POC. The groups will be facilitated by Steven Macramalla, a professor of Psychology at SJSU. The Club will work on a 3- to 4-week cycle, reading one book per cycle, with several chapters covered each week. People who have not read the text are welcome to "fishbowl" the meetings, listening in without commentating.

Meetings will discuss the main points of selected chapters, clarifying concepts, relating them to current events and personal experiences, provide historical context, debunk pseudoscientific myths, and ask what actions can be taken on a daily basis and as engaged citizens.

If you have already been doing your own reading, you can of course bring up material from those books, using it to illuminate the central points of the book we are focusing on.
Future texts will include, in no particular order, and more to be added later:
-Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Bell Hooks
-The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
-Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, Beverly Daniel Tatum
-How to Be Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi
-White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, Carol Anderson

Virgil Cent was at a demonstration where Black protestors were confronting police. When the police blocked and pushed back, the protestors called “White Shield”, and “white people moved to the front and protected us” and “the cops became less violent, like wow.”

It will take a while, but our long term commitment is for Luma and its members to be able to step in when needed as a ‘White Shield’, much like the women of Louisville Kentucky who stepped in to physically protect black demonstrators from the potential brutality of white officers. At the community level we wish to provide bodies, resources, time and fearlessness, being there for you, POC, and following your lead, where you need us, when you need us, and how you need us.

We are not here for a moment but to grow momentum. This is generational work.

The issues which confront Black Americans are the issues which face all of America. COVID-19, the coming economic slow-down, the looming environmental free-fall, even international relations, all intersect with the rights, equality and social redress Black Americans and POC seek.
Just as the Black community has suffered the concentrated poison concocted from every ill imaginable – political, economic, environmental – so, too, the antidotes will be the same remedies this nation and others need to bring politics, the economy and the environment back to functioning health.
Change in society as in yoga comes from a combination of reflection and action, both collective and individual.
We wish to promote individual reflection and group action.

BIO:
Steven Macramalla brings his experience as a lecturer in psychology where he has facilitated discussions on sexism racism and classism from the point of view of social psychology. His background also includes training and diversity workshops through stir fry seminars. As a person of Middle Eastern descent and a recently naturalized citizen, he has a “stepping stone” perspective, an ability to bridge two worlds for those genuinely interested in learning.