Esther Armah - Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing

Join award-winning journalist, playwright and writer Esther Armah at Libreria (a bookshop by Second Home) during the global tour of her widely praised new book Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing (Berrett-Koehler Publishers), as she discusses the language of whiteness, its legacy of untreated trauma and navigating the ‘illusion of inclusion’ in Britain with Joy Francis.

A #1 new release in two categories on Amazon, Temple University Professor and BET News host Marc Lamont Hill calls Emotional Justice a ‘brilliant, pathbreaking and wholly original intervention into the conversation on race and justice’.

The Emotional Justice framework, developed by Armah over 10 years, emerged from her experiences as a journalist in London and South Africa during the Truth and Reconciliation process, and was built as a roadmap, informed by communities in the UK, US and Africa.

According to Armah, the crucial missing piece in the path to racial healing and sustainable equity is the absence of ‘emotional justice’, a new racial healing language to help black, brown and white people to do their emotional work.

In practice, this means unlearning the language of ‘whiteness’, a narrative that centres white people, especially white men, at the cost of the lives and mental health of women and black and brown people globally. Emotional Justice also invites everyone to answer the critical question: ‘How do I speak the language of whiteness?’

Esther will be in conversation with Words of Colour’s Executive Director Joy Francis, and will read from Emotional Justice, followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

About the Author

London-born Ghanaian Esther Armah is an international award-winning journalist, playwright, radio host, writer and speaker. Esther is currently CEO of The Armah Institute of Emotional Justice (The AIEJ), a global initiative implementing the Emotional Justice framework she created. A journalist for 17 years, in England she worked across BBC radio and TV for 10 years, including as a producer at Panorama. In New York, she was radio host of ‘Wake Up Call’ at New York’s WBAI on the Pacifica Network and is currently a columnist with one of Ghana’s leading newspapers, Business & Financial Times. In 2019 she was named one of ‘Africa’s Woman Leaders: Woman Leadership Award’ CMO Asia and the World Women Leadership Congress. She lives in Accra, Ghana.