FESTIVAL KEYNOTE! Fatherhood and Transformation: Shaka Senghor on Honesty and Healing
Saturday, May 7 | 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM- In-Person and Live Streamed
Freight & Salvage
- 2022
- ASL Interpreted programming
- Health, Psychology & Spirituality
If you’ve never heard Shaka Senghor speak, prepare to be transformed. A renowned author and activist who has been interviewed by Oprah, Trevor Noah, and others, Senghor is today’s most important voice for men—whether fathers or sons—and for the women who love them. With his bestselling new book, “Letters to the Sons of Society: A Father’s Invitation to Love, Honesty, and Freedom,” Sengkhor invites men everywhere on a journey of honesty and healing through moving letters to his sons—one whom he is raising and the other whose childhood took place during Senghor’s nineteen-year incarceration. (His previous bestselling book was “Writing my Wrongs: Life Death and Redemption in an American Prison.”)
Senghor unpacks the toxic and misguided messages about masculinity, mental health, love, and success that boys learn from an early age. He issues a passionate call to all fathers and sons—fathers who don’t know how to show their sons love, sons who are navigating a fatherless world, boys who have been forced to grow up before their time—to cultivate positive relationships with other men, seek healing, tend to mental health, grow from pain, and rewrite the story that has been told about them.
Author and commentator Van Jones notes how men often “just don’t talk about certain things—especially the pain that we carry when we feel we are falling short as fathers. Senghor courageously sheds light on topics that have almost never been discussed in public.” Venture capitalist, author, and father Ben Horowitz writes simply that this book “will change the way you look at everything.”
The night before Mother’s Day, don’t miss this talk on men and fatherhood.
Introduced by Kate Harrison, Councilperson, City of Berkeley.
The bookstore partner for this session is Pegasus Books! Buy the books online on their website, at Bookshop.org, or purchase them in person at the Festival. More information here.
This program will have ASL interpreters. 
