Reading as Spiritual Practice: Spirituality Books from BIPOC Voices

Decolonizing and nature-based reads for all year

It’s Thanksgiving—a holiday about gratitude and harvest…that is also steeped in violent white supremacist myth. And so, as a white person who writes a lot about nature-based spirituality, I wanted to take this opportunity to center BIPOC voices who have written about the important work of decolonizing spirituality.

I firmly believe that BIPOC voices are critical to engaging well with nature-based (or any other form of) spirituality, and so I want to share some great decolonizing reads for this holiday and beyond:

A picture of some of the books in this post (the ones I have copies of)

• Becoming Rooted by Randy Woodley

• Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys by Richard Twiss

• Living Resistance by Kaitlin B. Curtice

• For This Land by Vine Deloria Jr.

• The Altar Within by Juliet Diaz

• You Are the Medicine by Asha Frost

• Theologizin’ Bigger by Trey Ferguson (available January 2024)

• Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman

• Womanist Midrash by Wilda C. Gafney

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• American Brujeria by J. Allen Cross

• Faithfully Radical Christian, a Substack newsletter by Naiomi Gonzalez

• World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

• Decolonizing Traditional Christianity by Jo Leuhmann

• What Makes You Bloom by Kevin Miguel Garcia (available January 2024)

This list is by no means exhaustive, so let me know in the comments about any voices I missed. May we all work together toward liberation and wholeness!

In Wonder,

Kandi Zeller (she/her)

KandiZeller.com