Viral Justice

How We Grow the World We Want

By: Ruha Benjamin

Narrated by: Ruha Benjamin

This audiobook narrated by Ruha Benjamin offers an inspiring and uniquely personal vision of how we can build a more just world one small change at a time

“A book as urgent as the moment that produced it.”—Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism School

Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.

Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father’s premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother’s experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well.

This inspiring audiobook offers a passionate and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.

©2022 Ruha Benjamin (P)2022 Princeton University Press

Critic reviews

“Ruha Benjamin is among our sharpest, most expansive thinkers on the manifold inequalities of the current order. Viral Justice reckons with the practices that uphold that order and how we might dare to change the world—a book as urgent as the moment that produced it.”—Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism School

“As Ruha Benjamin narrates her life story, we come to see in detail both how structures—carceral, racial, gender—affect individuals and communities and how, through small acts of justice, we can navigate these structures, prefiguring the world that we want and need.”—Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz

“In this riveting and beautifully written book, Ruha Benjamin expertly channels her personal experiences to illuminate how solutions to social and racial injustice can be transformative when they are individualized. To accomplish meaningful, collective change, we should first look within ourselves. Justice can be contagious when it is personal.”—Uché Blackstock, MD, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity

This is a must read

This is definitely a must read. The author of touches on a lot of current issues that are relevant for our society today. You definitely needs your Notepad to take notes of ideas that might abrupt during this reading. She did a great job.

Wonderful book! I highly recommend!!!!

This is an excellent book for those wanting to elevate the world we live in.

I am moved and so inspired! Powerful!

I am recommending this book to EVERYONE. You have spoken to my soul. I hung on every word. Thank you for putting “pen to paper” so much of what I have felt in my heart and experienced in my 50 years on this planet. I feel validated. I feel seen. I feel…community. Her words enabled me to visualize so easily all that she was conveying in her message. There’s a word for that ability, I’m sure, I just am not sure what it is. Lol Listening to her read it to me, felt like a good friend sharing thoughts and feelings that, in almost every way, mirrored my own. Thank you sincerely for this book. ✊🏾🖤✊🏾🥰

Excellent - Must Read!

I found this book interesting, enlightening, and full of many unspoken truths. I’m inspired to have my study group use this for our next study to help enlighten all of us on Viral Justice. Thank you Dr. Benjamin for this masterful work.
Josie Reynolds

This book is a rare gem

Very inspiring book that makes you reflect on how you can in the place you stand become a spark or a virus that infects those around you to make the world we want to see.

Fantastic book!

It’s like I had all these pieces from all over and Dr Benjamin put them all together for me. This book was extremely knowledgeable but even more so, this book gives me hope. Viral justice is possible. It starts with us.

Amazing!

My first time reading Dr. Benjamin’s work and I loved it! A must read for all.

Micro-dosing

For some time now, people in my inner circle and professional community have been talking about community building in turns of micro-dosing hope. This was a honest reflection of the micro-dosing we forget in our daily walk. So much of what we experience leaves us with illusion that we are powerless but this shines a different light on that misaligned thought. On this Founders Day of Spelman College, our beloved school, I’m glad to have completed this listening and I’m inspired to apply this framework to my own efforts to tell a story!

I need time to process

The wealth of knowledge in this book is impeccable. This book is for everyone but as a new environmental health scientist and agent of environmental justice it’s definitely up my ally

Excellent!

Substantive and exactly the kind of thought provoking book I need to keep motivated and encouraged.