New Book, ‘Radical Hope,’ Offers Ways to Find Hope in Uncertain Times

radical hope carolina de robertis

radical hope carolina de robertis

In these uncertain and turbulent times, how do you hold onto hope, optimism, and courage?

For Carolina De Robertis, the answer lay in Radical Hope, a book she conceived of three days after the election.

The essays in Radical Hope are socially conscious love letters written by award-winning novelists, poets, political thinkers, and activists, including Junot Díaz, Alicia Garza, Roxana Robinson, Lisa See, Jewelle Gomez, Hari Kunzru, Faith Adiele, Parnaz Foroutan, and many others.

The letters were written along the lines of James Baldwin’s essay “My Dungeon Shook” in The Fire Next Time.

As De Robertis told us in a recent interview:

I wanted to respond to all the grief, fear, and outrage I was seeing and hearing, within my own communities and beyond them, as people grappled with a new level of threat to their progressive values and, in many cases, to their lives.

I kept thinking about James Baldwin, particularly his letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time, and how the epistolary essay form allowed a brilliant blend of intimacy and sociopolitical rumination. A love letter that grapples with our world, with injustice and visions for change.

I hungered to read letters like that about our times, from many perspectives, from the point of view of immigrants, Muslims, women, queers, transgender folks, people of color, straight people, white people, men, elders, young folks, parents, thinkers, poets, dreamers. Such letters seemed like they could be a kind of sustenance.

Read the full interview and learn more about this powerful, necessary book over at Berkeleyside.com. 

Then, get your tickets to see this session on Saturday, June 3 at 7 p.m.