About the Author

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is an award-winning associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on racial literacy in teacher education, Black girl literacies, and Black and Latinx male high school students. A sought-after speaker on issues of race, culturally responsive pedagogy, and diversity, Sealey-Ruiz works with K-12 and higher education school communities to increase their racial literacy knowledge and move toward more equitable school experiences for their Black and Latinx students. Sealey-Ruiz appeared in Spike Lee's "2 Fists Up: We Gon' Be Alright", a documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement and the campus protests at Mizzou.

Reviews

"Sealey-Ruiz opens a world to us in which we are reminded of the importance of speaking truthfully - with both love and rage-about our past and the lovers and loved ones who bring us to the present- and home." Jacqueline Woodson, Author of Red at the Bone
"These poems are lighthouses. They are roadmaps. They are canaries returning from the coal mine with news of joyous survival. Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz has seen what stalks the blood of an unexamined self- one scared to walk into the beautiful ache of love- and here she is dazzlingly unafraid to show us 'what liberation looks like' on the other side. 'There is no shade / no place to retreat' from this telling, this raised glass to the glorious risk-and-recovery of life. Determined and compassionate and open, this is the voice of a poet who knows the heart and a scholar who knows the stakes. And good lord are we lucky to have it. Sealey-Ruiz's work should be within arms reach of every classroom in America." Dr. Adam Falkner, Author of The Willies
"From the moment I opened this book, I was captivated and enamored with the beautiful ways Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz uses language to tell stories of love, stories of hope, stories of despair and then stories of love again. Throughout each poem, she shares her truths-truths that we can all relate to if we have ever been brave enough to love." Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, Author of Cultivating Genius
"Love from the Vortex is an evocative book of poems that ceaselessly opens our hearts page after page. Dr. Sealey-Ruiz holds our hands and walks us through her journey of finding, losing and holding onto love. One falls out and falls back in love by the end of it. This is a must have for those of us who enjoy expanding our hearts while we read. Now more than ever, we need texts like this that remind us of the art of loving in full presence." Angel Acosta, Founder of New York City Healing Collective
"Love from the Vortex & Other Poems is an earnest reminder of how humbling, trying and rewarding love is. Despite age or experience, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems resonates with anyone who has ever found, nurtured and lost love and serves as a comfort that love, no matter how fleeting, is a joy in itself and that loving and caring for oneself is the only way to get through and to get by. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is a true wordsmith and inspiration." Brittany Maldonado, Artist
"Love from the Vortex represents the documentation and memorializing of how love can hurt and liberate one to continue to heal through loving themselves; while finding hope and patience in loving another. This book is for any woman who may have experienced pain in love and loving and who is uncertain of how to heal." Dr. Cluny Lavache, Educational Leader
"I saw beauty in how the trauma of her experiences are met with Love and acceptance, cultivating a story of fond familiarity. Enabling the reader to glimpse inside some of her foundational experiences without the anxiety of regret or desire for answers, but rather, as they are. It's only right that she makes the vortex visible. I've danced with the vortex. Still do." Patrick Williamson, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Educator
"I was quite in awe of these poems. The poems are beautifully written. They are compelling, emotive, and evocative. They captured my soul and left me feeling vulnerable." Love from the Vortex Reader