The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde
Rima Vesely-Flad, Ph.D.
Feb 2026 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Heni Zoutomou
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About this audiobook
This pioneering and pathbreaking book brings together the rich spirituality of Black literary giants with the profound spirituality of the Buddhist tradition. Never before have we been informed and transformed with this unprecedented encounter—and our catastrophic times require it! —Dr. Cornel West
Black, queer, feminist, Buddhist: The Fire Inside casts a fresh new light on the radical literary legacies of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde
Includes meditation exercises
The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lord and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.
Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment with radical [noun]. She explores the writers’ enduring legacies to show that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment. Each chapter shares how looking inward is the way forward, examining Baldwin and Lorde through key Buddhist principles:
This book offers space for emerging conversations within spiritual communities—ones that don’t shy away from difficult or uncomfortable truths; that center—and celebrate—Black, queer, radical thought; and that embrace the ways our inner lives, creative fire, sensuality, and expressions of love can ignite and sustain revolutionary liberation.
Black, queer, feminist, Buddhist: The Fire Inside casts a fresh new light on the radical literary legacies of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde
Includes meditation exercises
The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lord and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.
Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment with radical [noun]. She explores the writers’ enduring legacies to show that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment. Each chapter shares how looking inward is the way forward, examining Baldwin and Lorde through key Buddhist principles:
- Suffering as a teacher: how Baldwin and Lorde investigated suffering in their own lives—and how expanded and disrupted interpretations of the Dharma
- Denial, impermanence, and death: on Baldwin’s exploration of white supremacy and fear of death and Lorde’s understanding of illness and inevitable change
- Ultimate and relative reality: how honoring race, gender, sexuality, and difference lies at the heart of Buddhist liberation
- Karma and not-self: how the doctrine of karma can be reclaimed to cultivate inner liberation and support activists working to dismantle oppression
- Anger and compassion: how we metabolize internalized rage, reject hatred, and embrace compassion toward transformation
- Erotic paths to enlightenment: on the power of sensuality and erotic energy; rejecting dominant heteronormativity; and attaining enlightenment through sexual union
This book offers space for emerging conversations within spiritual communities—ones that don’t shy away from difficult or uncomfortable truths; that center—and celebrate—Black, queer, radical thought; and that embrace the ways our inner lives, creative fire, sensuality, and expressions of love can ignite and sustain revolutionary liberation.
About the author
Rima Vesely-Flad, Ph.D. is a research affiliate at Princeton University and a Visiting Professor of Buddhism and Black Studies at Union Theological Seminary, NYC. She leads Buddhist teaching and meditation courses at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and former Director of the Inside Out Prison Education Program which is a partnership between the Swannanoa Correctional Institution for Women and Warren Wilson College. She is a Fulbright Scholar and Awardee in South Africa and Ghana. She is a contributing writer for Lion’s Roar and other publications and the author of two academic books Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives and the Struggle for Justice.
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