The Enneagram for Black Liberation: Return to Who You Are Beneath the Armor You Carry Spiral-Bound |
Chichi Agorom
The Enneagram for Black Liberation: Return to Who You Are Beneath the Armor You Carry
This fascinating book uses the Enneagram as a tool to help Black readers remember their wholeness and worth that existed long before systems of supremacy told them they were not enough.
Am I worthy of belonging? Am I loved just as I am? Am I safe to exist without worry?
How do Black women return to our truest selves in systems that answer "no" to these three questions?
The Enneagram is an ancient system of human development that shows us the limiting stories that keep us stuck in unhelpful patterns, and invites us into more expansive stories. For too long, conversations about the Enneagram and its personality types have been centered on and by whiteness. In The Enneagram for Black Liberation, certified Enneagram teacher and trained psychotherapist Chichi Agorom reclaims the Enneagram as a powerful tool for Black women to rediscover our wholeness and worth that existed long before systems of supremacy told us we weren't enough.
For Black women in particular, our Enneagram personality types reflect more than just our way of being in the world; they are shaped by armor that we use to protect ourselves from pain, suffering, and shame. Breaking down each Enneagram type as a form of armor, this book offers practices to help Black women, and all who live on the margins, begin to build a sense of self separate from our mechanisms of self-protection, while working to dismantle the systems that require us to stay constantly armored up. Chichi Agorom takes readers through each of the nine Enneagram types, along with stories of Black women who identify with them, to illustrate the stories people must tell themselves in order to feel safe. In the process, Agorom seeks to inspire us to expand beyond our type patterns.
Wholeness work is justice work. Centering freedom, ease, and rest for Black women, Agorom invites each of us to claim the Enneagram as our tool for resilience-building in the continued fight for liberation.
"Chichi Agorom's voice is a part of the reckoning that has been needed in the culture of the Enneagram. Writing with clarity and heart, she describes the map of the Enneagram and the armor that marginalized identities have depended on to survive in a culture of white supremacy and patriarchy. This is simply a great book on the Enneagram and an offering to our collective liberation." --Renée Rosario, MA, LPC, Core Faculty member of the Narrative Enneagram
"Chichi Agorom is inviting us to center Black women's wholeness in order to define and find "true" liberation that sees us all. She proves, through beautiful storytelling and masterful teaching, that when black women are free we all will be free. This book is pure womanist ethic at work." --EbonyJanice Moore, Hip Hop Womanist Scholar & Founder of Black Girl Mixtape
"This is the most important Enneagram book I have ever read. While this book was written specifically to further the cause of Black liberation, it should be in the hands of every Enneagram enthusiast. By highlighting how our place in society, inherent privilege, and unearned power affect our ability to lay down the armor of our type, Chichi has made the Enneagram and the deep, healing work it invites us into something truly accessible and useful to everyone." --Abi Robins, Author of The Conscious Enneagram
"Chichi Agorom's The Enneagram For Black Liberation reclaims seemingly lost identity, reimagines what is possible for Black Bodies, and decolonizes concepts and spaces that refuse to center our experiences. I will be using and recommending this powerful tool of love and liberation throughout my lifetime." --Thea Monyée, EcoWomanist, Oya Priestess, and Creative Healer
"In this book, Chichi Agorom answers the commodified, memeified self-help version of Enneagram with an invitation to become free of entrenched survival patterns, more connected to self and others, and ultimately more whole using this spiritual-emotional tool that can help us truly awaken to who we are meant to be. By centering the experience of Black women, she offers us a path for understanding the Enneagram as a tool for collective liberation." --Micky ScottBey Jones, The Justice Doula, founder of Enneagram for the People, Certified Enneagram Teacher and Coach
"The Enneagram for Black Liberation is a beautiful embrace of the Enneagram system as a tool for freedom and transformation, as well as a powerful critique of ways the Enneagram has been taught through the singular lens of dominant culture, which has limited greater liberation for those with marginalized identities." --Rev. Dr. Christopher T. Copeland, spiritual director and core faculty member of The Narrative Enneagram
Chichi Agorom, Certified Enneagram Teacher with The Narrative Enneagram, writer, and psychotherapist, is a lifelong student of what it means to be fully human. She holds a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Denver Seminary and a Post-Master's Certificate in Marriage and Family Therapy. She lives in Los Angeles.