Norma Wong
Norma Wong, a life-long resident of Hawaiʻi, is a descendant of Native Hawaiians and Hakka Chinese immigrants. She has decades of experience in organizing, policy, strategy, and politics in Hawaiʻi, particularly in the area of Native Hawaiian issues, serving in the Hawaii State Legislature and as a policy lead and negotiator for Governor John Waiheʻe, Hawaiʻi’s first Native governor. Norma began her spiritual practice at the same time as her political life unfolded. These days, it is the intertwined application of Zen practice and an indigenous worldview that Norma brings to provoke practical inquiry and redirect work. She is a thought partner, a strategist, and a teacher.
Books (1)
Synopsis:
Spiritual and community lessons for embracing collective care, co-creating sustainable worlds, and responsibly meeting uncertain futures—a Zen and Indigenous take on building better, more balanced ways of being
Talking story, weaving poetry, and offering wisdom at the intersections of strategy, politics, and spiritual activism, When No Thing Works is a visionary guide to co-creating new worlds from one in crisis. It asks into the ways we can live well and maintain our wholeness in an era of collective acceleration: the swiftly moving current, fed and shaped by human actions, that sweeps us toward ever uncertain futures. Grounded in Zen Buddhism, interconnection, and decades of community activism, When No Thing Works explores questions like:
- As we stand at a threshold of collective change, what leaps must we make?
- How can we push through discord and polarization and meet these critical changepoints collectively?
- What practices, strategies, and spiritualities can align to vision a sustainable future for our communities and descendants?
- How can we step out of urgency to tend to our crises with wisdom, intention, and care?
With wise and witty prose that wanders and turns, guides and reveals, Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Rōshi Norma Wong’s meditation holds our collective moment with gravity and tender care. She asks us to not only imagine but to live into a story beyond crisis and collapse—one that expands to meet our dreams of what (we hope) comes next, while facing with clarity and grace our here and now in the world we share today.
Reviews
“Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong explores the essence of a twenty-first-century Indigenous worldview in When No Thing Works. She relies on knowing that all things, past and future, are in relationship. What we imagine and how we walk in the present determines the future. As Norma signals, our walk must include leaps that take us into unknowns, but we will not be alone. Norma gives us wise counsel for this difficult moment on Mother Earth. One culture, one belief system, one community alone is unable to fulfill our ancestors’ collective hopes for all of our descendants. As Norma’s ancestors said, ‘O ka ehu kakahiaka . . . The red dawn of our people became the red dawn of many peoples.’ Hawwih (thank you in Caddo), Norma, your family, and your people!”—Judith LeBlanc, citizen of the Caddo Nation, ekah (grandmother), and executive director of the Native Organizers Alliance
“As we stand at the threshold of collapsing systems and broken hearts, there is an opening. In When No Thing Works, Rōshi Norma Wong gives us a compass for how to navigate the space in between where we are coming from and where we are going. This book is an invitation to practice who we need to be to meet this moment and shape a future of possibility and potential.”—Kerri Kelly, author of American Detox
Additional Information
120 pages | 5.51" x 8.51" | 6 b&w photos | Paperback
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