What Rainbows Reveal: Liturgies of Resilience is the debut poetry collection of James Jennings Jr., a multidisciplinary artist, composer, educator, and writer. This collection pays homage to his mother's commitment to spiritual mentorship as a Black Christian woman in Los Angeles, California. As a dedicated Los Angeles Unified School District educator and United Teachers Los Angeles Union leader, James learned about leadership, vocation, and sacrifice through observation, close listening, and through her gift of storytelling. Transmitting these life lessons into reflective and playful poetic offerings, James vividly imbues his writing with the same aura of gratitude, compassion, and imperfect grace reminiscent of his childhood.
While specifically written to encourage Black youth and parents, What Rainbows Reveal invites all readers to courageously embrace the infinite journey of resilient self-making. Grounded in a practice of infinite self-transformation and reactualization and bolstered by our collective human inheritance to change and to be, this work lovingly convinces the ego to rest along with its counterparts anxiety, doubt, and pride.
These soul-liberating liturgies usher readers towards a holistic dismissal of shame while pivoting those willing towards restorative practices of communal love, forgiveness, resourcefulness, and accountability. Attending to the challenges of social conformity, anti-blackness and racial violence, troubled (intergenerational) relationships, and male (in)vulnerability What Rainbows Reveal: Liturgies of Resilience gently releases readers back to themselves philosophically refreshed, spiritually recalibrated, and creatively rejuvenated.
Breathe (in the possibility of infinite potentiality) Listen (to your Beautiful Self) Forgive + Release (your Beautiful Self) Create + Commune (Beautifully Anew)
