A Book Review of Berkeley Author Ruth King’s “Healing Rage” And Its Positive Effects For Civil Plaintiffs And Criminal Defendants by Melanie D. Popper, Civil Rights Attorney, Revelation Law, Oakland, CA
A natural skeptic, I passed by Ruth King’s latest work, “Healing Rage,” time and again in my local bookstore without even taking thought. It had to sneak up on me. I had sauntered into an evening workshop after church last Fall unaware of the topic of discussion. I was just drawn in by a large and welcoming circle of endearing black women and a few smiling white faces, all yapping away together over their copies (some new and some tattered) of some book.
I eagerly asked Reverend E (short for Reverend Elouise Oliver), the workshop’s coordinator and one of the Bay Area’s preeminent spiritual leaders, where I could take a seat? Did the class cost anything? Did I have to have a copy before joining the group? Was this a safe space to discuss racial rage? She furrowed her brow at me and said something like, “You don’t have to get everything right. It was like that when you were a kid, but not now. Just relax.” I stayed.
Each week, we met to discuss a chapter in the book and complete some writing, meditative, and physical exercises. I learned about Ruth King’s theory that rage is a result of trauma, and is actually a transformative and useful energy that goes unrecognized by so many of us. We talked about the birth of the rage child, a creature which seemed synonymous with “the Inner Child” or the “Intuitive self,” terms used by other psychologists (e.g.. Spizzano, Bradshaw). Our rage child manifests itself as our personalities cloaked in depression, dependency, defiance, our distraction. She or he was just wanting us to express the rage and sadness and grief about previous abuse. Once freed, our lives could be transformed with creativity and innocence–the true nature of our inner children.
This all sounded a bit too new-agey and crunched out for me. I mean, I was in the legal profession. There’s no place for inner children here. But I stayed. We made rage temples (little spaces in our homes wherein it was safe to let our rage children express themselves in full and unabashed splendor). We wrote family and personal histories and traced the roots of rage and how it had, in so many ways, been a catalyst for awakening that had been ignored. I eventually took Ruth King’s three-day “Celebration of Rage” retreat and plan to attend her healing circles this year and next.
So, what does all this have to do with the law? Is it all just some Yanni-inspired rubbish designed to let people off the hook because of their “bad childhoods”? Not at all. This book helps people to help themselves and to stop living our lives as victims. This is especially useful to those of us who have experienced the trauma of racial discrimination, sexual abuse, and crippling social and economic disparities, all of which are perpetuated in a disproportionate manner in minority families. Unexpressed rage is passed down. This is not to say that there are not oppressors out there. Social ills are still alive and well, hence my work a s a civil right attorney.
But at some level, we have a choice to express the rage passed down from our families in a responsible manner, thereby transcending it, rather than letting it run our lives through depression, dependence, defiance, and distraction. Ruth King’s book is revolutionary because it implies that only by expressing the rage within, especially in a way that does not harm others, can we be completely free. I highly recommend this book and this work to my clients, anyone who has been through our (so-called) criminal justice system, and my friends and associates. It’s a daring and extremely touching work.
