Synopses & Reviews
Cited by
Time magazine as one of the top religious innovators of the new millennium, Jan Willis has an extraordinary story to tell. Raised in a segregated Alabama mining camp, she eventually would become a renowned Indo-Tibetan scholar and professor of religion at Wesleyan University. Along the way, she took part in an armed takeover of a Cornell University building during a black student protest, marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham, and, ultimately, found peace within a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Hers is a deeply personal journey of racial and spiritual healing that "will move anyone who is compelled by the examined life." (
Publishers Weekly, starred review)
"Jan Willis's honest, lucid, mindful, and heartful account of her amazing life thus far, its struggles and woundings, its triumphs and joys, is certainly the roar of a lioness of truth-awakening, empowering, inspiring! Listen to it with pride and pleasure!" (Robert Thurman, author of Inner Revolution)
"Willis writes frankly about family, race, spirituality, and finding grace among life's most difficult challenges. Dreaming Me is more honest and fascinating than anything I've read in a long time." (David Pesci, author of Amistad)
"Intensely felt...highly personal...A moving story that aims to reconcile the experiences of faith and racism." (Kirkus Reviews)
About the Author
Jan Willis is one of Wesleyan University's most inspiring and popular professors. She is the first African American to become Indo-Tibetan scholar and translator. She has been a practitioner of Tibetan-Buddhism for more than 30 years and is the author of several books on Buddhism.