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A review by kendragaylelee
See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur
5.0
See No Stranger isn't just a book I read. It is a book that has profoundly shifted the way I see the world. In particular, the way I grapple with adversity, grief, and trauma (both my own and that unfolding on the world stage).
In fact, if I could give every graduating college senior any book, it would be this one. Because we need the kind of idealism that people in their early 20s hold about the world at large, but we have to teach them (and ourselves) how to both run toward pain and how to care for ourselves and each other in the midst of that pain. We all need to know how to love the world without burning out in a white hot flame. How to draw others close to us, to protect them, to love them the way they need and want to be loved.
Reading this book made me more human. And it reminded me that their is beauty in all religious traditions. That the sacred guides and shapes us. And that ritual (for both embracing and releasing) is crucial to our humanity.
This book is full of hope and practical steps to take to love other people (people who are not like us in some way, people we have been taught to "other," even people we might be inclined to hate). And it's full of beautiful, personal illustrations about what it might look like to really, really love ourselves. Completely. Once and for all.
In fact, if I could give every graduating college senior any book, it would be this one. Because we need the kind of idealism that people in their early 20s hold about the world at large, but we have to teach them (and ourselves) how to both run toward pain and how to care for ourselves and each other in the midst of that pain. We all need to know how to love the world without burning out in a white hot flame. How to draw others close to us, to protect them, to love them the way they need and want to be loved.
Reading this book made me more human. And it reminded me that their is beauty in all religious traditions. That the sacred guides and shapes us. And that ritual (for both embracing and releasing) is crucial to our humanity.
This book is full of hope and practical steps to take to love other people (people who are not like us in some way, people we have been taught to "other," even people we might be inclined to hate). And it's full of beautiful, personal illustrations about what it might look like to really, really love ourselves. Completely. Once and for all.