Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want

"Winner of the Stowe Prize, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center" "Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards, Personal Development & Human Behavior Category" "A NationSwell Book of the Year" "Finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems" "Shortlisted for the getAbstract International Book Award 2023, Business Impact Category" Ruha Benjamin is an internationally recognized writer, speaker, and professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. She is the award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code and editor of Captivating Technology, among many other publications. Her work has been featured widely in the media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, The Root, and The Guardian. From the author of Race After Technology, an inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world-one small change at a time "A true gift to our movements for justice."-Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day. Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father's premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother's experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well. Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world. "This is an openhearted, multilayered work that vibrates with ideas on ways to make a new world out of the interlocking crises of COVID-19 and racial capitalism. Progress may be a 'tear-soaked mirage,' as Benjamin writes, yet her book is far from devoid of a sense of humor or hope, full of ways to 'live poetically' while remaking the systems that have failed us."---Rhoda Feng, New York Magazine "Heartbreaking, inspiring, and hopeful. . . . Benjamin's approach is undoubtedly radical."---James M. Jones, Science "There's no one better to light the way out and guide us in building a just future than Ruha Benjamin."---Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine "Benjamin's choice to weave personal stories of childhood and motherhood with action and theory made it easier to see how I fit into the narrative she was crafting. . . . In the spirit of activists and writers like Octavia Butler, Benjamin encourages us to dream up a new, more equitable world."---A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez, YES! Magazine "A powerful, urgent plea for individual responsibility in an unjust world." "An emotional and thought-provoking wake-up shout to put an end to systemic discrimination. . . . A rich and engaging space for collective healing." "Compelling . . . . The final pages of Benjamin's Viral Justice are a testament to human resilience, to finding meaning