Our November 2021 Book Club Selection Is Here!
Dear Good Ancestors,
I am feeling really well!
We’ve just completed another month in the book club (our next selection is below), and it was an incredible experience reading Savala Nolan’s book Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body. If you haven’t caught our podcast episode with Savala yet, you can listen in/watch it here.
Our Good Ancestor Book Club members really enjoyed getting to ask Savala their own questions after having read her book through the month of October. I know there are a lot of book clubs to choose from, but what I think sets our book club apart is the ability to actually host private members-only events with our authors of the month. I do hope you’ll consider joining us if you aren’t a member already :)
If you follow me on Instagram you’ll know that I’ve recently returned from Austria, where I went to speak at TEDxVienna. I cannot wait to share the full talk with you once it’s up on the TEDx Talks channels. It was a truly powerful experience getting to stand on a stage and talk for 18 minutes about my deep love of books, my journey as a reader, the ways that books by authors of colour can help us reclaim our humanity, and the importance of centering and celebrating BIPOC authors across all genres.
"Inspirational… radical… fierce… a moral compass for our time."
― Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
ABOUT VALARIE KAUR
Valarie Kaur is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, best-selling author, award-winning filmmaker, educator, innovator, and celebrated prophetic voice.
She leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice. Valarie burst into American consciousness in the wake of the 2016 election when her Watch Night Service address went viral with 40 million views worldwide. Her question “Is this the darkness of the tomb – or the darkness of the womb?” reframed the political moment and became a mantra for people fighting for change.
In the last twenty years, Valarie has won policy change on multiple fronts – hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, Internet freedom, and more. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project to inspire and equip
advocates at the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and justice.
Valarie has been a regular TV commentator on MSNBC and contributor to CNN, NPR, PBS, the Hill, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post. A daughter of Sikh farmers in California’s heartland, Valarie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School.
Valarie’s debut book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, was released in 2020 and expands on her “blockbuster” TED Talk.
ABOUT SEE NO STRANGER
See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love is an urgent manifesto and a dramatic memoir of awakening, this is the story of revolutionary love.
How do we love in a time of rage? How do we fix a broken world while not breaking ourselves?
Valarie Kaur—renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer—describes revolutionary love as the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. Starting from that place of wonder, the world begins to change: It is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, even a nation.
Kaur takes readers through her own riveting journey—as a brown girl growing up in California farmland finding her place in the world; as a young adult galvanized by the murders of Sikhs after 9/11; as a law student fighting injustices in American prisons and on Guantánamo Bay; as an activist working with communities recovering from xenophobic attacks; and as a woman trying to heal from her own experiences with police violence and sexual assault.
Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists, Kaur reclaims love as an active, public, and revolutionary force that creates new possibilities for ourselves, our communities, and our world. See No Stranger helps us imagine new ways of being with each other—and with ourselves—so that together we can begin to build the world we want to see.
See No Stranger is a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
If you are not currently a member of the Good Ancestor Book Club, we would love to have you join us!
You can find out more about the book club at www.goodancestorbookclub.com. To join the book club simply join or upgrade your membership to the Good Ancestor Book Club member tier, where both monthly and annual subscriptions are available.
We begin our book discussions next week on Monday 5th July, and our author event with Pragya will be on Thursday 29th July.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. Looking forward to another incredible ride with another phenomenal book.
