Tracey Michael Lewis-Giggetts - Then They Came for Mine: Healing from the Trauma of Racial Violence

Praise for Then They Came for Mine

If faith is something powerfulfinding ways to tether human reality and divine love togetherthen that faith must be honest about the world but also reach toward healing. In Then They Came for Mine, Tracey Michael Lewis-Giggetts has not just offered a magnificent, searing, and soul-shaking narrative but has also found a way to do what the best sages, priests, and griots do: she has presented the world with revelation, the breath of the Spirit woven into the very fabric of Black life, literature, survival, art, artifacts, movement, possibility, and humanity. Part memoir, part mediation, part manifesto, this work has the character and skill of poetry, the brilliance of grace, the mystery of Black wisdom, and the illumination that the world we have been given is not all that there is to life. This book is affirmation. It is witness. It is lush. It is liberation. It is fire. It is spirit. It is testimony. It is gospel.

Dant Stewart, author of Shoutin in the Fire: An American Epistle

Tracey Lewis-Giggetts is a master at weaving autobiographical narrative with cultural commentary, sharing her life experience and wisdom in such a way that it makes readers long to connect more deeply with their own. In Then They Came for Mine, she invites us to gaze at the wounds of racial trauma not as a sadomasochistic exercise but as a way to illuminate the way to hope and healing. This is not a book to be approached lightly. This is holy ground.

Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Professor of Practical Theology and Pastoral Counseling, Columbia Theological Seminary

So many of us are traumatized by the unbearably persistent and violent racism that is deeply woven into the fabric of our nation. Lewis-Giggetts knows the pain of loved ones murdered in racist attacks and also the pain of wounds that bleed invisibly, assailing our bodies and souls even as we carry on with the endurance of our ancestors. With passion and compassion, Lewis-Giggetts preaches that celebrations of so-called resilience and rushing to premature reconciliation will not heal our hearts, communities, or nation. Only by honestly exposing our wounds and speaking truth with fierce empathy and accountability can we heal the trauma that white supremacy has wrought on Gods children of every ethnicity.

Jacqui Lewis, author of Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World and Ten Essential Strategies for Becoming a Multiracial Congregation

Anyone who desires whole mind-body-spirit healing from racial trauma should read this book. Timely, holistic, and insightful, Lewis-Giggettss Then They Came for Mine is a trustworthy guide that Ill keep returning to in my personal healing journey and cite often in my professional work.

Christena Cleveland, author of God Is a Black Woman and founder of the Center for Justice + Renewal

Lewis-Giggetts offers a once-in-a-generation work with Then They Came for Mine. She weaves the personal testimonies of those whose loved ones have been killed by white supremacy and the histories of racial violence that undergird those events. Simply surviving the violence and rising to excellence fall short of our desires for a better future. In fact, resilience is making us sick, writes Lewis-Giggetts, who calls the reader to choose healing over reconciliation. Lewis-Giggetts provides a necessary challenge for anti-racist and trauma-informed healers, teachers, and leaders: center healing and love, for our lives and future generations depend on it.

Patrick B. Reyes, author of The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive

Then They Came for Mine provides an accessible and frank mind-body-spirit analysis of the kind of Christian faith needed to authentically respond to Black peoples trauma caused by white racial violence. It is a timely resource for engaged faith community conversations about this violence.

Traci C. West, author of Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality: Africana Lessons on Religion, Racism, and Ending Gender Violence

With heart-wrenching narrative, astute analysis of Scripture, and unblinking passion, Lewis-Giggetts offers us a front-row seat to the very real impacts of systemic racism and what happens when it gets personaland its always personal. This is exactly the type of book that white people who claim to care about racial justice need to read, because it takes us from the comfortable upper echelons of the racialized body politic into the experience of a family living with the results of senseless racial violence. This story will forever change you. If you let it, it will change you for the better.

Kerry Connelly, author of WaitIs This Racist? and Good White Racist?

By sharing very personal experiences, Tracey Lewis-Giggetts draws us in to recognize and affirm the blatant and nuanced manifestations of racism and the resultant racial trauma. Having experienced intense racial trauma at a very young age, I very much appreciate her intimate examination of what its like to be Black in America. In refreshing conversational language, Lewis-Giggetts offers theological, sociological, historical, and legal perspectives on the complexities of racism and misogyny while examining the components lending them columnar support. Best of all, her very frank conversations about trauma are not offered to the exclusion of words about the human potential for faith, hope, and love.

Kevin Cosby, President of Simmons College of Kentucky and author of Getting to the Promised Land

THEN THEY CAME FOR MINE

Healing from the Trauma
of Racial Violence

TRACEY MICHAEL
LEWIS-GIGGETTS

2022 Tracey Michael Lewis-Giggetts

First edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 3110 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville,

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NIV are from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by Mary Ann Smith

Cover art by Jawaan Burge. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lewis-Giggetts, Tracey M., author.

Title: Then they came for mine : healing from the trauma of racial violence / Tracey Michael Lewis-Giggetts.

Description: First edition. | Louisville, Kentucky : Westminster John Knox Press, [2022]