Image Description: The shoulders-up silhouette of a Black woman facing to the left is situated against a background that is bright yellow on the top and transitions to orange on the bottom. Her hair is short, her curls are tight. Colorful flora and fauna appear to be growing from within the woman and softly radiate outside the edges of her body, like an aura. The stems and leaves weave in and out of bold white text that reads, “VIRAL JUSTICE,” “HOW WE GROW THE WORLD WE WANT,” “RUHA BENJAMIN.”
“This book is an education. Wide-ranging and provocative, soaring yet grounded, Viral Justice reveals how racism poisons our bodies, communities, and institutions, but the book also chronicles inspired movements seeking repair and justice. The work of a beautiful mind and spirit, it moves fast—mixing memoir with social analysis and community engagement—and left me challenged and hopeful and stirred.” —Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“This is an openhearted, multilayered work that vibrates with ideas on ways to make a new world out of the interlocking crises of COVID-19 and racial capitalism. Progress may be a “tear-soaked mirage,” as Benjamin writes, yet her book is far from devoid of a sense of humor or hope, full of ways to “live poetically” while remaking the systems that have failed us.” -Vulture, Most Anticipated Books of 2022.
Viral justice
How We Grow the World We Want
(Princeton University Press 2022)
WINNER OF THE 2023 STOWE PRIZE
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“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