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A review by alannabarras
See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur
5.0
"We can have all the empathy in the world for a group of people and still participate in the structures and systems that oppress them."
Part memoir, part historical account of the political and societal forces that swept the US after 9/11, See No Stranger is a powerful argument for why neither power nor empathy is enough on its own - to create true, lasting change both are needed. We must have enough empathy for those who don't look like our immediate family to sit down and understand why and what changes are needed, and we must have enough power to get those changes pushed through.
Valarie Kaur weaves together her stories of growth and learning internally with her family and externally across the US. She travels to the 9/11 memorial, multiple sites of hate crimes, and even Guantanamo Bay to better understand the underlying motivations that bring people together or push them to inflict such pain on those around them. This is a perfect bookclub book to do a chapter at a time, reflecting on your responses to her writing in each section. She focuses heavily on the importance of love and curiosity/wonder, which can be very hard to even consider in times as high-stress and angry as we're currently living through. But that's the point - love and curiosity about the 'other' is what will pull us back out of this mess, and her writing is so well structured that about a paragraph after I would think "but what about..." she would answer my question.
Go find and read this book, I'll be adding it to my rotation of books I revisit every couple of years. Written or spoken, both formats are excellent.
Part memoir, part historical account of the political and societal forces that swept the US after 9/11, See No Stranger is a powerful argument for why neither power nor empathy is enough on its own - to create true, lasting change both are needed. We must have enough empathy for those who don't look like our immediate family to sit down and understand why and what changes are needed, and we must have enough power to get those changes pushed through.
Valarie Kaur weaves together her stories of growth and learning internally with her family and externally across the US. She travels to the 9/11 memorial, multiple sites of hate crimes, and even Guantanamo Bay to better understand the underlying motivations that bring people together or push them to inflict such pain on those around them. This is a perfect bookclub book to do a chapter at a time, reflecting on your responses to her writing in each section. She focuses heavily on the importance of love and curiosity/wonder, which can be very hard to even consider in times as high-stress and angry as we're currently living through. But that's the point - love and curiosity about the 'other' is what will pull us back out of this mess, and her writing is so well structured that about a paragraph after I would think "but what about..." she would answer my question.
Go find and read this book, I'll be adding it to my rotation of books I revisit every couple of years. Written or spoken, both formats are excellent.