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Becky Thompson (born June 22, 1959) is an writer, poet, professor, scholar yoga teacher and activist. Thompson's publications are widely read by academic and popular audiences interested in trauma, healing and social justice and has received many fellowships and awards for her contribution to the fields of race and gender studies. ''Thompson is currently chair of the sociology department at Simmons College.

=Biography= Becky Thompson was born to Sally Fillmore and David Wangsgaard in Logan, Utah. Her last name “Thompson” comes from her second father, Tony Thompson. Becky is the eldest of three. She is devoted to her biological and intentional family.

Thompson came of age politically through the multiracial feminist movement[] of the 1970s and 1980s, inspired by the work of Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Barbara Smith, Jacqui Alexander, bell hooks, June Jordan, and others.

Thompson first attended Colorado College, and then completed her undergraduate degree in sociology and women’s studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1982. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology at Brandeis University in 1991 and was a post-doctoral Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton University in African American Studies from 1992-1993 where she studied under notable scholars such as Cornel West, Toni Morrison, Wahneema Lubiano, Gayle Pemberton, Paula Giddings, and Kevin Gaines. In recent years (2006 to the present), Thompson has attended the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown where she studied under Sonia Sanchez, Ethelbert Miller, Major Jackson, Rafael Campo, Martín Espada, Alicia Ostriker, Jean Valentine, Jacqueline Woodson, and Cornelius Eady, whose teaching has been a source of inspiration.

Thompson is a senior level yoga teacher (RYT-500) and has been practicing yoga for fifteen years. Thompson considers yoga the foundation upon which her writing, poetry, teaching and activism flourishes. She credits her experiences with her students in the US and in Thailand and her study with Rolf Gates, Stephen Cope, Samantha Cameron, Ouyporn Khuankaew, Ginger Norwood, Daniel Orlansky, as her inspiration for writing Survivors on the Yoga Mat: Stories for those Healing from Trauma.

She earned tenure in the Sociology Department at Simmons in 1998 and became full professor in 2007.

Thompson currently lives in Jamaica Plain, an intentionally multiracial, LGBT-friendly community in Boston with her activist daughter, Crystal Rizzo. Her son LaMar Delandro, lives and works in Oakland, California.

=Career=

Thompson has taught at Duke University, Wesleyan University, the University of Colorado, Bowdoin College, the University of Massachusetts and elsewhere. She teaches courses on political poetry, birth and death, anti-racism, feminist pedagogy, and social theory at Simmons College where she also serves as Chair of the sociology department. Thompson has also delivered talks at a range of universities and community settings in Brazil, Tunisia, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa, Barbados, Canada and the United States.

Thompson has been awarded fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation in African American Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Ford Foundation, and Political Research Associates.

Her teaching awards have included the Outstanding Faculty Award from the MOSAIC office at the University of Colorado in 2009, the Vagina Warrior Award for Teaching in 2007, and the Meiko Hill Peacemaker Award in 2005.

Thompson’s book of poetry, Zero is the Whole I Fall into at Night was published as a Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series for 2011 and a chapbook of that poetry won the 2011 Creative Justice Poetry prize. Regarding the book, notable poet Dwayne Betts wrote, “Sometimes you forget what a poem should do, and it takes a gift to remind you. Thompson possesses such a gift.”

Thompson's poem "For Harvey Milk" was set to music by composer Nicholas White, and her poem “History in the Water” is included on the CD "My Soul is Anchored" and poetry anthology, Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy.

Fingernails across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora, an anthology co-edited with Randall Horton and Michael Hunter, was adapted into a play that premiered in Chicago and at the National Black Theater in Harlem.

Beyond a Dream Deferred: Multicultural Education and the Politics of Excellence, co-edited with Sangeeta Tyagi, won the Gustavus Myers Award for Outstanding Book on Human Rights in North America.

A Hunger So Wide and So Deep: A Multiracial View of Women’s Eating Problems was chosen as a featured book by the National Bookseller’s Association.

Thompson was a featured writer at the Kentucky Women’s Writers Conference in 2003.

Her memoir, Mothering without a Compass: White Mother’s Love, Black Son’s Courage, was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month selection for the gay and lesbian series, Insight Out.

=Yoga and Activism=

Thompson’s activism has included civil disobedience to end apartheid, the spread of nuclear weapons, US military intervention in Central America in the 1980s and protest to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine. She is an active supporter of the abolition of the prison system, the struggle to end violence against women and children, and other human rights issues. Thompson considers yoga and meditation helpful tools for healing at the level of the mind, body and spirit. Thompson believes that yoga and meditation offer daily ways to sustain a commitment to justice while helping people multiply joy in their lives.

=Select Publications / Bibliography=

Books

 * Zero is the whole I fall into at night. Editor’s Selection Series (Charlotte, North Carolina: Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2011).


 * When the Center is on Fire: Passionate Social Theory for Our Times, co-authored with Diane Harriford (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).


 * Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora, co-edited with Randall Horton and Michael Hunter (Chicago: Third World Press, 2007).
 * A Promise and a Way of Life: White Antiracist Activism (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2001).


 * Mothering Without a Compass: White Mother’s Love, Black Son’s Courage (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
 * Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity. edited by Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi (New York: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1996).


 * A Hunger So Wide and So Deep: A Multiracial View of Women's Eating Problems. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Paperback, 1996). Fifth printing.


 * Beyond a Dream Deferred: Multicultural Education and the Politics of Excellence edited by Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi. Foreword by Derrick Bell. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

= See Also =

Becky Thompson's Blog

= Notes =

