Imagine Freedom

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.

Rahiel Tesfamariam is an award-winning activist, journalist, theologian, and international speaker. A former Washington Post columnist, she is the founder of Urban Cusp, a cutting-edge online community highlighting faith, social change, culture, and global awareness. Amidst the Ferguson Uprising, Rahiel led #NotOneDime, a national economic boycott. For years, she worked in Africa, organizing with Pan-African movements across the continent. Rahiel is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Divinity School, where she was the inaugural William Sloane Coffin, Jr. Scholar for Peace and Justice. As a generational voice, she has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Ebony, Elle, and on BET and Revolt TV. Essence magazine named Rahiel one of the nation’s “New Civil Rights Leaders.” Visit Rahiel.com and connect on social media: @RahielT.