Postdoctoral Fellow, Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University. I write about Southeast Asian music and manuscripts.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons brings the confluence of cultural work, activism, and a 2500-year-old practice to ground her courage in living this complicated life. A survivor-healer, Black feminist lesbian award-winning writer-filmmaker, Aishah brings her life lens to work reinforced by a 22-year practice of Vipassana Meditation and trauma-informed, mindfulness meditation teacher certifications. More than one year of cumulative silent retreat practice in the U.S. and India, a daily meditation practice, three decades of therapy, and a cultivated community are foundational to Simmons moving through the trauma and suffering she experienced from childhood and adulthood sexual violence. 

Aishah’s cultural productions --the 2006 groundbreaking, Ford Foundation-funded acclaimed feature film, NO! The Rape Documentary and the 2020 Lambda Literary-award winning anthology, love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse break silences, offer healing paths for trauma, and provide visions for humanely disrupting the inhumane epidemic of sexual violence. 

Feminist activist Gloria Steinem says of Love WITH Accountability, "With this brave and healing anthology of truth-telling about sexual abuse within Black families, Aishah Shahidah Simmons sets an example for all families."

Ahead of its time, NO!’s world premiere at the 2006 Pan African Film Festival occurred 19 months before Title IX was successfully applied to campus sexual assault cases and is one of the contemporary instigators of the modern campus sexual assault movements. 

Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and human rights activist, says, “If the Black community in the Americas and the world would heal itself, it must complete the work, NO! begins.” 

Since 1995, Aishah has led over 400 workshops and dialogues in the U.S. and in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. She has received numerous awards, and held Artist-in-Residence and/or guest faculty appointments at colleges/universities and organizations including the University of Chicago, Temple University, Scripps College, Spelman College, Williams College, the University of Pennsylvania, the Weekly Dharma Gathering Platform, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Elm Community Insight: An Engaged Meditation Society, Morgan State University, Insight Meditation Community of Western Massachusetts, Sounds True, the Highlander Research and Education Center, the Collegeville Institute and Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

I studied classical violin from 8 onwards. Learned electric guitar around my mates from Def Leppard. Wrote devotional music in a Buddhist monastery, learned Irish fiddle and now really enjoying English 3/2 hornpipes.

Freedom Futures Collective creates innovative and diverse learning opportunities for artists to collaboratively explore the transformational power of art activism as a tool to build the FREEDOM future we dream.

We support the recovery of secular members in Overeaters Anonymous.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons is following