Meet the Author

Dr. Zakkiyyah Salaam-Reeder

Dr. Zakkiyyah Salaam-Reeder writes from the intersection of personal experience, cultural inquiry, and a lifelong commitment to honest healing.

Her work begins where most conversations stop: at the edges of the things we have been given but never asked for. The things we have held onto because letting go felt like losing ourselves. Dr. Z knows those places intimately. She writes about them with the kind of clarity that comes from having done the work.

ProtoCal is the culmination of self reflection, lived experience, and reckoning. This book could only be written by someone willing to examine her own inherited patterns before asking anyone else to examine theirs.

Dr. Z’s voice is thoughtful, grounded, and unflinching. She does not offer easy answers or reduce complex human experiences to tidy conclusions. What she provides is something more valuable: honest company, language for reflection, and a framework for examining what has shaped us.

Her writing is shaped by a deep belief that healing is not passive. It requires us to look clearly at what we have received, what we have repeated, what deserves gratitude, and what we are ready to revise or release. She brings that belief to every page of ProtoCal and to every room she enters.

Her work speaks to readers navigating questions of identity, family, belonging, accountability, and legacy.

To every Human who has ever sensed that some of what they are carrying is not entirely theirs.