Reading List · Lisanne Swart
Authors Like
Menakem’s work centers on somatic abolitionism — the idea that racialized trauma lives physically in the body across generations, and that healing it requires body-based practice, not just conversation. This list is for readers who want more of that tradition: the trauma researchers whose work underlies his somatic framework, and other writers addressing racialized and intergenerational trauma from complementary angles.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 authors · Trauma & Racial Healing · Somatic Psychology · Updated August 2026
Bessel van der Kolk
Van der Kolk’s research on how trauma reshapes the brain and body, most fully laid out in The Body Keeps the Score, provides much of the neuroscientific foundation Menakem’s somatic framework builds on, though van der Kolk’s focus is trauma broadly rather than racialized trauma specifically.
Read him for the underlying trauma neuroscience — Menakem applies a closely related body-based framework specifically to racial trauma.
Peter Levine
Levine developed Somatic Experiencing, a body-based trauma therapy method built on the premise that trauma is stored in the nervous system rather than only the mind, laying groundwork that directly informs Menakem’s own somatic approach.
The clinical originator of the body-based trauma method Menakem applies specifically to racialized and intergenerational trauma.
Resmaa’s direct field — Joy DeGruy
DeGruy’s Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome examines how the trauma of slavery has been transmitted across generations of African American families, sharing Menakem’s core interest in trauma passed down through bodies and behavior rather than conscious memory alone.
A close conceptual companion to My Grandmother’s Hands, focused specifically on intergenerational transmission within African American families.
Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris’s research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) demonstrates the same core principle Menakem applies to racial trauma — that early and chronic stress produces measurable, lasting physical health effects, not just psychological ones.
A medical, public-health-focused parallel to Menakem’s somatic framework, useful for readers who want the clinical evidence for trauma’s physical toll.
Ibram X. Kendi
Kendi’s work on the structural and historical mechanics of racism operates at the policy and ideas level rather than the body, but shares Menakem’s underlying concern with how racial harm gets perpetuated across generations and institutions.
A useful intellectual companion if Menakem’s somatic focus is one piece of a bigger picture you want to understand at the structural level too.
Thomas Hübl
Hübl’s work on collective and intergenerational trauma, including trauma transmitted through historical atrocity, shares Menakem’s interest in healing that must happen at a group or societal level, not only individually.
Useful if The Quaking of America’s focus on collective, national-scale healing resonated — Hübl works in closely related territory.
Where to start if you loved Resmaa Menakem
If you want the underlying trauma neuroscience, then read Bessel van der Kolk.
The Body Keeps the Score provides much of the science Menakem’s somatic framework builds on.
If you want the clinical origin of somatic therapy, then read Peter Levine.
He developed the body-based trauma method Menakem applies to racial trauma specifically.
If you want the medical evidence, then read Nadine Burke Harris.
Her ACEs research demonstrates the same physical toll of trauma from a public health angle.
If you want his own work first, then start with his books.
My complete guide to Resmaa Menakem’s own books is the place to begin.
If you want more of this tradition, then keep exploring it.
My best books about trauma and healing list has the natural successors.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Resmaa Menakem
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