African American Lecture Series November 2022

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November 17, 7 – 8:30 PM. Cullman Performance Hall in the NC History Center


North Carolina native Phyllis Jeffers-Coly will read from and discuss her recently released book, We Got Soul; We Can Heal: Overcoming Racial Trauma through Leadership, Community and Resilience.

The author will talk on how using the idea of culture and SOUL synonymously can foster healing. She is an advocate for the celebrating ritual and ancestry in our lives, stressing to a collective capacity for healing and restoration.

North Carolina Native Phyllis Jeffers-Coly (certified 600-hour yoga instructor) is the co-founder and co-owner of Diasporic Soul and Tangor Café, which she and her husband, Eddy Coly, established in 2016. Diasporic Soul offers heritage and healing experiences that hold space for Black people to deepen their capacity to practice self-care and for healing and restoration, resilience and resistance.  Phyllis is the author of We Got Soul; We Can Heal: Overcoming Racial Trauma Through Leadership, Community and Resilience (April 2022) and “When Grandma Comes to Visit: Exploring How Communion with Our Ancestors & Nature Deepens Our Capacity for Healing, Restoration, Resilience, and Resistance” published in Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022): Transcendent Wisdom and Transformative Action: Reflections from Black Contemplatives of The Journal of Contemplative Inquiry. Phyllis is also co-author of the forthcoming article in Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, “They Are Coming to Get Something”: A Qualitative Study of African American Male Community College Students’ Education Abroad Experience in Senegal, West Africa.”
 
Most recently, Diasporic Soul hosted, in Partnership with the Cincinnati Recreation Commission, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Artist Gee Horton three Black. Dope. All Good.  Communal Healing Retreats for Black Men in Cincinnati, OH with the support of a 2021-2022 Black Empowerment Works Grant from the United Way of Cincinnati.  Additionally, for the Dak’art Biennale, Diasporic Soul co-curated My Soul to Keep a virtual OFF exhibition featuring the works of mixed-media artist Angela Franklin that included two offerings focused on the ways that Angela’s works reflect how Phyllis writes about SOUL as “a transformative healing resource that reflects the cultural sensibilities of the African Diaspora”  in We Got Soul; We Can Heal.