ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews Ben Ali, an entrepreneur and motivational speaker who’s written a book on finding elevation, success, and purpose.
Ali is the son of Ben and Virginia Ali, who founded the iconic Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C., in 1958. It’s where he spent most of his life working.
“I turned 60 years old a couple of years ago, and after 40 years in the family business, 40 years grinding, running the store, building the business, representing D.C. here for all of our world travelers and our locals, I said, ‘What’s next for me?’” he said, explaining what made him want to write his book, “Ascend.”
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The books offers the kind of practical steps you would find in a guide, he told Corie, challenging its readers to aim higher on such things as self worth and financial thinking while moving from survival to significance.
Much like that process however, Ali said the book starts with healing first.
“A lot of young Black men and Black men period are hurting. We’re hurting, right? There’s been this trauma. There’s been lots of things we’ve been through as Black men even before we were born, going back to generations of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade and what was done to us in this country. Our fathers, our grandfathers, our great grandfathers; we carry some of that with us, and then in your lifetime, a lot of kids have been through a lot. A lot of kids have seen violence they never should have seen, they’ve been exposed to drugs, things that they never should be a part of. They haven’t had the benefit of a full childhood with good rearing and so the first book is on healing because whatever state you’re in, whatever position you’re in, in order to move forward, you can’t live in the past, OK?” he said.
Hear the interview and more in Season 7, Episode 12 of “Black Men Sundays.”
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