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Alycee J. Lane

Goodreads Author

Website

https://blk2buddah.wordpress.com/

Twitter

AlyceeLane

Genre

Nonfiction, Spirituality, African American

Member Since

October 2015

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Alycee Lane is an Oakland, California-based writer.

A graduate of Howard University, she studied English literature and later obtained her Doctorate of Philosophy from UCLA, where she specialized in African American literature and culture of the civil rights and black power movements. From 1995 to 2003, Alycee served as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, after which she obtained her Juris Doctor from UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall).

Alycee Lane is author of the award-winning book, Nonviolence Now! Living the 1963 Birmingham Campaign's Promise of Peace (Lantern Books, 2015). She is also host and creator of the Patreon podcast The Wretched of Mother Earth, where she “decolonizes our climate catastrophe.” ...more

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What are you currently working on?

Alycee J. Lane I am currently working on a book about the five Buddhist lay precepts (refrain from killing/doing harm, refrain from taking what is not given, abstain…moreI am currently working on a book about the five Buddhist lay precepts (refrain from killing/doing harm, refrain from taking what is not given, abstain from misconduct re: sense-pleasures, abstain from false speech, abstain from use of intoxicants) and am thinking about them from the perspective of African American history and culture, and as a challenge to identity politics.(less)

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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Alycee J. Lane Nonviolence Now! was not the book that I intended to write. What I intended to write was a book on the subject of African Americans and Buddhism – a t…moreNonviolence Now! was not the book that I intended to write. What I intended to write was a book on the subject of African Americans and Buddhism – a topic inspired by my participation on the East Bay Meditation Center’s year-long Commit to Dharma (C2D) Buddhism study group, facilitated by Larry Yang. In particular, I was initially interested in the growing African American Buddhist community and how it was thinking through the relationship between African American histories/cultures and Buddhist practices.

At the same time that I was participating on C2D, I was also blogging regularly on political, social and cultural issues through the prism of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s writing and, more specifically, through his philosophy of nonviolence. I had taken up this project because my readings in Buddhism drew me to the issue of nonviolence and I had come to realize how little of King’s work I had actually read, let alone studied.

My practice, my study of King’s work and my blogging – and thus the idea for my book – really just came together on May 16, 2013, the 100th day of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ hunger strike. By asking myself the questions -- what can I do to help bring the terrible injustice of indefinite detention to an end? What am I doing or not doing to make Guantanamo possible? -- I found myself having to go deeper and to ask: what does it really mean to live nonviolence in thought, word, and deed, to embrace it – as King urged – because “of the sheer morality of its claim”?

I answered all of these questions by turning to the Birmingham Campaign’s commitment card, which King discussed and reproduced in Why We Can’t Wait and which I saw with new eyes. I saw that it was not merely a formality, a thing that volunteers would sign off on in order to get on with the “more relevant” business of nonviolent protest. It was, instead, a guide for becoming, at the level of everyday life, an alternative to our violent society as well as a purposeful actor against injustice and violence – wherever and however they manifest. It was a deep inquiry into how we live our lives and whether we contribute to the violence around us. It was a reminder that the business of creating a peaceful world, of making sure such travesties as Guantanamo never happen again, will never be complete unless and until we also do the arduous work of transforming the violence in our own minds, hearts and spirits.

And finally, the commitment card was for me a mirror through which I could see that my own personal, everyday investments in violence absolutely compromised my ability to make peace. I wrote Nonviolence Now! because I imagined that this is true for many of us. I wrote it because I wanted to urge us on to the unfinished business of practicing nonviolence as a way of life.

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Alycee J. Lane’s books

Average rating: 4.92 · 12 ratings · 3 reviews · 3 distinct works

	Nonviolence Now!: Living the 1963 Birmingham Campaign's Promise of Peace it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2015 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	For Colored Girls at the end of empire when nonviolence is not enuf it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Wretched of Mother Earth: The Handbook for Living, Dying, and Nonviolent Revolution in the Midst of Climate Change Catastrophe 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2018	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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55 posts
Alycee J. Lane's Blog

“Emissions inequality” and Jeff Bezos’ houses

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has an estimated net worth in excess of $118 billion, which makes him “the richest man alive,” according to CNN. He owns “a 5.3 acre property in Medina, Washington, another home in Beverly Hills, California, a 30,000-acre ranch in Texas, and apartments in New York.” But that is not all. According […]

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Published on July 02, 2019 08:45

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Alycee is Currently Reading

Alycee Lane is currently reading

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Gender and American Culture)

by Barbara Ransby

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Jan 07, 2016 07:39AM

Quotes by Alycee J. Lane (?)

“In order to live a life of nonviolence one must be willing to soften -- to open one's heart to others, to forgive, to be compassionate, to be graceful, to be loving toward others and oneself, to be kind. We must be willing, in other words, to reject hardness as the measure of power and justice, and to embrace, instead, so much of what is commonly associated with the feminine. Indeed, it is no longer tenable – if it ever were – to assess and critique nonviolence in terms of whether or not it conforms to some masculine idea of the justice-seeking self.”
― Alycee J. Lane

tags: inspirational, nonviolence, politics

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