Ethan talks to author, scholar and teacher Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad about her insightful new book The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. Mixing scholarship, memoir, and a deep reverence for the spiritual insights of two of the greatest writers and thinkers of the 20th century, Dr. Vesely-Flad's newest work approaches Buddhist teachings from an angle that is deeply human, literary, and personal. How did these two great authors touch on such dharmic topics as the truth of suffering, relative and ultimate reality, and much more? Fans of literature and Buddhism will enjoy this conversation and new book deeply. This conversation belongs to one of Ethan's favorite categories: "Things you didn't know were Buddhist."

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Rima Vesely-Flad, PhD, is the author of Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022) and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017). She is the founder of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies and the recipient of grants from the Fetzer Institute, the Henry J. Luce Foundation, the Fredrick P. Lenz Foundation, the Crossroads Program, and the US Department of State Fulbright program. You can follow her work at www.blackbuddhiststudies.org.

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