If you’re in need of joy, Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts has the book for you. I’m excited to spotlight The Black Joy Playbook: 30 Days of Intentionally Reclaiming Your Delight.
About the Book
Reclaim your joy with this beautifully designed and thoughtful playbook from the author of the NAACP Image Award winner Black Joy.
We have an ancestral mandate to hold not just the pain and trauma of our experiences as Black people, but to hold the joy and love and peace that is also ours.
Joy is a weapon, not only for resistance, but also a means for healing—a powerful tool that is all-encompassing and necessary. Black Joy Playbook helps you mine your memories to discover what joy looks and feels like to you and then guides you to re-create it in your present-day life.
Divided into themes of joy in the body, breath, tears, laughter, and every day, each of the thirty entries includes the following:
• a short inspiration
• questions for reflection
• a meditation
• space for contemplation
• suggestions for how to choose joy
It’s time to chase joy and cultivate it from the inside out!
About the Author
As a writer and thought-leader, Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts offers those who read her work and hear her speak an authentic experience; an opportunity to explore the intersection of culture, identity and faith/spirituality at the deepest levels. She is the host of the podcast, HeARTtalk with Tracey Michae’l, and founder of HeARTspace, a healing community created to serve those who have experienced trauma of any kind through the use of storytelling and the arts.
As a writer, Tracey has published 25 books including several collaborations with numerous high-profile authors. Calling herself a “literary midwife,” this NY Times bestselling author is a highly sought-after ghostwriter/collaborator whose work includes Feeding the Soul and I Did a New Thing by Tabitha Brown, Better Not Bitter by Yusef Salaam, Sideshow by Rickey Smiley, and many others.
In 2021, Tracey became one of 20 writers who contributed to the groundbreaking book, You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience edited by acclaimed researcher Brene Brown, and founder of the MeToo Movement, Tarana Burke.
In 2022, Tracey’s critically acclaimed book, Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration (Gallery/Simon and Schuster) was published and in 2023 won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work—Instructional. Black Joy has received rave reviews from celebrities like Kerry Washington, literary authors like Kiese Laymon and Deesha Philyaw, and media outlets like Good Morning America, Essence magazine, and USA Today.
Tracey’s book, Then They Came for Mine: Healing from the Trauma of Racial Violence (WJK), examines the source and impact of racial violence against Black people in all its forms and offers a blueprint for the way the Christian church can help facilitate healing. Then They Came for Mine has won the 2023 Wilbur Award, the highest honor given by the Religion Communicators Council, for excellence in the communication of religious issues, values, and themes, in public media.
Most recently, Tracey’s dynamic journal/daily devotional, The Black Joy Playbook: 30 Days of Intentionally Reclaiming Your Delight released on October 29, 2024.
Tracey has spoken on a number of platforms around the country on topics related to race/social justice, healing, and faith/spirituality. Additionally, her freelance work has been published in print and online publications such as Oprah Daily, The Washington Post, Essence magazine, The Guardian, The Chronicles for Higher Education, Ebony Magazine, TheRoot.com, and more.
