Upcoming & Past Events
Columbus, Ohio Book Talk
Columbus Mennonite Church is hosting author, Amanda K Gross for a book talk at 12noon on Sunday, February 16th. Join us for a reading and conversation about White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change.
This event is free and open to the public.
Stay Gold Books Author Event
Join author Amanda K Gross as she reads at Stay Gold Books in Pittsburgh, PA on February 20th at 7pm.
This event is free and open to the public.
Portland Author Event at Jet Black
White Women, Get Ready is coming to Portland, Oregon!
Join author and anti-racist organizer Amanda K Gross for an author talk and Q&A on Thursday, February 27th at 6PM (pacific time).
This event is free and open to the public.
WWGR at Portland Mennonite
Author, white lady, and Mennonite Amanda K Gross will be preaching at Portland Mennonite Church on Sunday morning March 2nd. Join the congregation for worship at 9:30am, followed by a focused affinity small group dialogue.
PG County Book Event
This free book event is open to the public, hosted by the PG County Office of Human Rights at the Laurel Prince George’s County library branch.
Our Work to Do: Healing Cycles of Harm in the Service of Anti-Racist Solidarity, Healing, and Repair
This two-hour interactive workshop will consider the strong embodied reactions that sometimes arise within racial justice organizing spaces, how these reactions are connected to unhealed cycles of harm, and how we can acknowledge and learn from them in order to deepen intrapersonal and collective healing, solidarity, and repair.
Please wear comfortable clothes and come prepared to engage with gentle movement and breathwork. All ages and abilities are welcome.
Copies of White Women, Get Ready will be available for sale. Focused book discussion to follow.
About Amanda K Gross
Amanda K Gross is an intersectional anti-racist organizer, a weaver of people, ideas, and threads, and author of White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change. As a mixed media artist and trained yoga instructor, she integrates creative embodied practices throughout her anti-racist organizing. Amanda is certified at the 200 hour RYT level by YogaRoots On Location’s Anti-Racist Raja Yoga School. She has an MA in Conflict Transformation and a PhD in Expressive Arts.
About the book
Inspired by Dr. Joy DeGruy's work on Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome—and used with her blessing—White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change tells the story of how white ladies have been groomed to uphold overlapping systems of oppression, the harmful multigenerational impact, and how we can use our unique white lady positioning to help upend these violent structures.
This book is one part of a larger body of collaborative work that emerged from the call within Black-led multiracial and multicultural spaces for white people, and white women in particular, to organize our own. Conceived out of multi-racial organizing community, White Women, Get Ready has been nurtured, edited, and critiqued within relationships, and is now being birthed, read, and discussed as one interconnected part of ongoing movement work.
H'burg Info Sesh
RSVP to whitewomengetready@gmail.com to attend the Jan 12th Info Session
You are invited to join a White Women, Get Ready winter book discussion group with local author Amanda K Gross (EMU '07, MA, PhD) intended to grapple with anti-racism efforts specifically geared toward identifying the silent role white women play in maintaining systemic racism.
About White Women, Get Ready
Inspired by Dr. Joy DeGruy's work on Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome—and used with her blessing—White Women, Get Ready tells the story of how white ladies have been groomed to uphold overlapping systems of oppression, the harmful multigenerational impact, and how we can use our unique positioning to help upend and heal from these violent structures.
About the Author
Amanda was born in the heart of Atlanta, Georgia, to two white Mennonites. Raised in the social justice legacies of Dr. King and her Anabaptist ancestors, she was also raised to be a good little white girl in a system built for her advantage. Over the past two decades, she has committed to the life, study, and embodied work of social justice, including studies in Restorative Justice, Conflict Transformation, and Sociology at Eastern Mennonite University, apprenticing with YogaRoots On Location’s Anti-Racist Raja Yoga School and the People’s Institute for Survival & Beyond’s Undoing Racism Workshop, and organizing with Youth Undoing Institutional Racism, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Black Girls Equity Alliance. Amanda has a PhD from the European Graduate School examining the role of arts and culture in sustaining white settlers in long term decolonization and anti-racist efforts. Follow her on instagram and facebook.
This book is one part of a larger body of collaborative work that emerged from the call within Black-led multiracial and multicultural spaces for white people, and white women in particular, to organize our own. Conceived out of multi-racial organizing community,White Women, Get Readyhas been nurtured, edited, and critiqued within relationships, and is now being birthed, read, and discussed as one interconnected part of ongoing movement work.
Arts Engagement Workshop
The Harrisonburg/Rockingham community is invited to participate in two arts-based workshops led by Amanda Gross and sheba gittens on Saturday, January 11th at the Lisanby Museum on JMU’s campus. Activities will engage with the museum’s current exhibit, Worlds Within and Without: An Exhibition of Contemporary Black Art. The Lisanby Museum and the Furious Flower Poetry Center present artwork from the Art Bridges Foundation in an exhibition celebrating the work of contemporary Black artists. There is no cost to attend, and participants may attend the first, second, or both workshops. Registration is limited; please click here to sign up by January 8, 2025.
10:00-11:30 am
Worlds within and without: An integrative arts-based engagement with self and community
1:00-2:00pm
Worlds Restore within: A restorative guided meditative drawing experience. Come rest, restore, and review within an embodied neurographic art practice (bring a yoga mat if you have one).
Facilitators:
sheba gittens is an anti-racist heArtivist, art educator, and creative consultant based in this iteration of the world. She is a trained Wellness Practitioner, Anti-Racist Raja Yoga Instructor, and Joy Facilitator. As a creative consultant she has supported numerous organizations and businesses nationally and internationally in manifesting events, programs, and workshops grounded in equity for humanity and that honor intersectionality. As an integrative multimedia heArtivist, she uses mixed media to educate and expand the consciousness of those she serves and currently works with the Ujamaa Collective, Balafon West African Dance Ensemble, and YogaRoots On Location.
Amanda K Gross is an intersectional anti-racist organizer and a weaver of people, ideas, and threads. As the founder, author, and creative director of Mistress Syndrome, she writes about the interconnectedness of racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and white womanhood. She is an anti-racist coach, educator, facilitator. As a hand weaver, mixed media artist, and trained yoga instructor, she integrates creative embodied practices throughout her organizing. Amanda is certified at the 200 hour RYT level by YogaRoots On Location’s Anti-Racist Raja Yoga School. She has an MA in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and is currently pursuing a PhD in Expressive Arts at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Amanda is the author of the recently published book, White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change.
Location:
Lisanby Museum, lower level of JMU Festival Conference and Student Center
1301 Carrier Drive
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
Free parking will be available in lots C12, D3, R4, across the street from the Festival.
Milwaukee Book Event
Boswell Book Company
2559 North Downer Avenue Milwaukee, WI 53211
Boswell Book Company presents an evening with Amanda K Gross, to discuss her latest book, White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change.
White ladies are everywhere. But as we navigate powerful social spaces and the everyday moments that shape our lives, we must confront our complicity in upholding racist systems. Part historical analysis, part memoir, and part call to action, White Women, Get Ready tells the story of how we white ladies have been groomed to uphold overlapping systems of oppression and how we can use our unique positioning to help upend these violent structures.
Amanda K Gross is an intersectional anti-racist organizer and a weaver of people, ideas, and threads. As the founder, author, and creative director of Mistress Syndrome, she writes about the interconnectedness of racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and white womanhood. She is an anti-racist coach, educator, and facilitator.
Registration is requested. Click here to register.
Assembly Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana
Join us for an evening talk by author, Amanda K Gross on Anti-Racism, White Womanhood, Harm & Repair at Assembly Mennonite Church, 727 New York Street in Goshen, Indiana.
WHITE WOMEN, GET READY: SUSTAINING ANTI-RACISM IN THE YEAR OF 2024
…at the Severna Park Public Library
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Author Amanda K Gross will read from her book, White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change, introduce an embodied tool for action, and invite participants to engage with the book's framework, personal reflections, and each other to consider their own intersections, experiences, and perspectives on the themes.
This interactive reading, facilitated discussion, and activity will share lessons learned from multi-racial, multicultural, and white affinity organizing with a focus on how white women and femmes can courageously get ready for—and sustain—deep and long-lasting commitments to anti-racist change.
Program Type:
Books and Writing, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Women’s Interest
Lancaster Author Event
Join author, white lady, and Mennonite for a reading and Q&A to learn how White Women, Get Ready seeks to dismantle and transform the legacy of white womanhood:
The Gallery at East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church
436 E Chestnut St, Lancaster, PA
Moravian Book Shop Author Event
Join Moravian Book Shop for an Author Event featuring Amanda K Gross, author of White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change.
Pittsburgh Author Event
Book Conversation at Valley View Presbyterian Church
Friday, October 11th
from 6pm
Join author, Amanda K Gross for a short reading and discussion around her book, White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change.White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change
Amanda K Gross will read from her book as she intimately reflects on her attempts to divest from whiteness and mobilizes toward co-creating healthier, more authentic relationships, cultures, and communities.
Big Book Celebration!
After eight years, Amanda's book is fairly here! Join us for a community celebration with a short reading, yummy treat, and opportunities to purchase the book, get it signed, meet your neighbors, and dance!
Want to support Amanda by purchasing the book in advance? https://www.mistresssyndrome.com/book
White Women, Get Ready: Free Author Event
EMU alum Amanda K Gross is giving an author talk about her forthcoming memoir, White Women, Get Ready: Healing from Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome.
Join us for light refreshments, a book talk, and Q&A at the Frame Factory, located in downtown Harrisonburg from 6–9pm. This event is free and open to the public. No registration is required.
Asheville Author Talk: Working Toward Anti-Racist Liberation
Author Talk and Q&A with light refreshments and time to be together in community.
Moving Towards Healing & Transformation with Our Families
Part I: Spring 2023; Thursdays March 9–May 18
6 2-hour sessions, every other week;
7–9pm Eastern
3/9, 3/23, 4/6, 4/20, 5/4, 5/18
In this time of increasingly visible extremism, facism, and political divisions, it can be painful to witness family members and friends express hurtful, and even harmful views. While it may be tempting to scapegoat loved ones and distance ourselves from them, our individual family members and friends are part of a much larger ecosystem that has encouraged these racist, sexist, and transphobic politics. Understanding where we come from and our part in it is a big part of figuring out where we want to go.
In this series, we will work with our complex and sometimes painful family histories to learn more about how our ancestries became white, acknowledge the harm this has caused/is causing, learn how this is connected to current politics, and work towards the healing and transformation of our family legacies. As an affinity-based workshop,* this series is designed for people who have been racialized as white, are interested in a courageous look at family dynamics, and who are committed to disrupting racism and other forms of oppression within our families, communities, and ourselves. We welcome family members to sign up and participate in these sessions together.
Cost tiers:
- $75
- $200 (Actual cost per person)
- $325
Mistress Syndrome uses a sliding scale in the spirit of our mutual abundance.
Full Description:
In this online workshop series, we will work with our complex and sometimes painful family histories to learn more about how our ancestries became white, acknowledge the harm this has caused/is causing, learn how this is connected to current politics, and work towards the healing and transformation of our family legacies. As an affinity-based workshop,* this series is designed for people who have been racialized as white, are interested in a courageous look at family dynamics, and who are committed to disrupting racism and other forms of oppression within our families, communities, and ourselves. We welcome family members to sign up and participate in these sessions together.
While some white people have extensive access to family histories, others may not. Even without much access to genealogical records or oral traditions, there is much we can learn through listening to silences, understanding the greater historical context, tuning into our experiences, and unpacking how white culture shows up in our family systems. This series is open to any white person—regardless of access to family historical records, legacies of adoption, and various definitions of “family”—who is interested in investigating their familial and cultural legacies and can commit to attending with an open heart and open mind.
In addition to—and often connected with—our racialized legacies, our family systems may be fraught with dysfunction, silence, and cycles of trauma. Our sessions together will integrate self- and community care practices as we work towards healing and more fully humanizing our family members and ourselves in navigating these tender spaces. We recognize that our understandings of who “family” is can be diverse (biological, adopted, chosen, etc.) and is also informed by the legacies of white culture and heteropatriarchy. While participants are encouraged to use their own definitions of “family,” the intent of this workshop series is to focus on the family legacies we’ve inherited due to and in relationship with our racialized identities.
As part of shifting our orientation away from an individualistic and colonized model, we will work towards doing this work with and alongside our families and not on or about them. This means that there will be opportunities to engage your family members in the work and also share your understandings with them. Although not required, we welcome family members to sign up and participate in these sessions together.
Even as we hold these painful legacies, our family relationships and cultures may also be the site of much joy and resilience. This series will consider how various family cultural practices can support us in dismantling intersectional racism while creating, modeling, and envisioning healthy and holistic transformative alternatives.
What is a white affinity space?
Affinity spaces (sometimes called "caucusing") are commonly used in anti-racist organizing. For those unfamiliar with race-based affinity work, the idea of racially segregating on purpose can come as a surprise. Affinity spaces help facilitate more honest conversation than often happens in multiracial spaces.
For people racialized as white who have rarely had to think about their own racial identity, the white affinity group creates a space for introductory conversations about race and racism without re-traumatizing Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color/ People of the Global Majority in the process. White affinity spaces also transfer the emotional labor and responsibility of race-related conversations onto white people as a space to practice these conversations with other white people.
International Symposium on Autoethnography & Narrative
ISAN Conference Presentation:
Playing in the Kudzu and Poison Ivy Together: Ethical Considerations of Anti-Racist & Decolonizing Autoethnography within White Settler Familial Relationship Dynamics
At 6pm Eastern on Tuesday, January 3rd Amanda will present on her dissertation research on the Autoethnography and Ethics panel along with a phenomenal group of other scholars and moderated by Chris Patti of Appalachian State University (USA).
Moving Towards Healing & Transformation with Our Families: An Anti-Racist Family History Project (for white people)
In this time of increasingly visible extremism, facism, and political divisions, it can be painful to witness family members and friends express hurtful, and even harmful views. While it may be tempting to scapegoat loved ones and distance ourselves from them, our individual family members and friends are part of a much larger ecosystem that has encouraged these racist, sexist, and transphobic politics. Understanding where we come from and our part in it is a big part of figuring out where we want to go.
In this series, we will work with our complex and sometimes painful family histories to learn more about how our ancestries became white, acknowledge the harm this has caused/is causing, learn how this is connected to current politics, and work towards the healing and transformation of our family legacies. As an affinity-based workshop,* this series is designed for people who have been racialized as white, are interested in a courageous look at family dynamics, and who are committed to disrupting racism and other forms of oppression within our families, communities, and ourselves. We welcome family members to sign up and participate in these sessions together.
The Threads We Weave: A History of Our Resistance to Oppression
The Threads We Weave:
A History of Our Resistance to Oppression
With Sheba Gittens and offered through the WHEAT Institute.
Description:
In this afternoon/two-day workshop, we will create an intersectional historical weaving of stories of resistance to oppression. Using intermodal and multidisciplinary approaches, we will integrate movement, breath, storytelling, self-reflection, and fiberart to build a shared foundational analysis for understanding intersectional oppression, movements of resistance, and our personal relationships to ancestral legacies and collective liberation.
Supply List: Embroidery thread and needle, scissors, shoe with laces, shoelaces you don’t mind sewing on (or other laces), embellishments, buttons, types of thread, colors, textures, etc...
About sheba: sheba gittens is an anti-racist heArtivist, art educator, and a creative consultant based in this iteration of the world. She is a trained Wellness Practitioner, Anti-Racist Raja Yoga Instructor, and Joy Facilitator. As a creative consultant she has supported numerous organizations and businesses nationally and internationally in manifesting events, programs, and workshops grounded in equity for humanity and that honor intersectionality. Additionally, Sheba is a PRIDE (Positive Racial Identity Development in Early Education) Project Artist and Artist Educator for the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education PRIDE Program through the Office of Child Development. She received her BA in Africana Studies with a focus in English Literature, and has spent her professional career working with and serving youth of all ages. She spent two years as a Padosi Fellow with the American Friends Service Committee’s Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR) as an anti-racist art educator, community organizer, and facilitator. As an integrative multimedia heArtist, she uses mixed media to educate and expand the consciousness of those she serves.
1st Decolonization & Justice Conference
1st Decolonization & Justice Conference
As one of ten student presenters, Amanda K Gross will present her paper:
Why Mennonites Can’t Dance & Other Tales of white Settlers Moving towards Transformative Justice
About the conference:
On November 4, 2021 the University of Regina’s ta-tawâw Student Centre and the Department of Justice Studies, in collaboration with the John Howard Society of Saskatchewan, are hosting the 1st Decolonization and Justice Conference. The purpose of this conference is to promote awareness and to foster innovation and creativity in the field of Decolonization and Justice. The proposed conference will provide a platform for learning and discussion between community members, practitioners, academics, law enforcement agencies, and justice stakeholders.
For more information about the conference, please email: decolonization.justice@uregina.ca
Engaging Your White Family Members About Intersectional Racism
Curious about addressing whiteness and intersectional racism in your family? Don’t know where to start? Feel like you’ve tried, failed, and are looking for support?
This is a six week series from Oct 12th to Nov 9th, 7–9pm Eastern
We will use self-reflection, trauma healing tools, arts and movement, and small and large group work to support you to disrupt racism within family patterns and nurture family cultures of liberation.
Based on ongoing work in my immediate and extended family, I will share tools, strategies, and frameworks that have supported me in engaging with white family members around intersectional racism and whiteness, along with stories of how I have grown through making mistakes and deepening my own self-reflection. As a group, we will develop shared language and analysis for better understanding intersectional racism, have opportunities to reflect on how these patterns show up on the embodied, personal, relational, familial, and cultural levels, and begin to work towards healing, shifting, and ultimately transforming them.
As an introductory workshop series, these sessions are intended to lay the groundwork for ongoing and future further engagement in anti-racism and decolonization. Interested participants will be eligible to participate in a longer format Anti-Racist Family History Project. As an affinity-based workshop*, this space is designed for people who have been racialized as white and who are committed to disrupting racism and other forms of oppression in their families, communities, and within themselves. Participants are expected to attend all six sessions.
*What is a white affinity space?
Affinity spaces (sometimes called "caucusing") are commonly used in anti-racist organizing. For those unfamiliar with race-based affinity work, the idea of racially segregating on purpose can come as a surprise. Affinity spaces help facilitate more honest conversation than often happens in multiracial spaces. For people racialized as white who have rarely had to think about their own racial identity, the white affinity group creates a space for introductory conversations about race and racism without re-traumatizing Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color in the process. White affinity spaces also transfer the emotional labor and responsibility of race-related conversations onto white people as a space to practice these conversations with other white people.
This event is in partnership with Miror.