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Be a Revolution

How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre, an eye-opening and galvanizing look at the current state of anti-racist activism across America.

In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society. In Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, she discussed the ways in which white male supremacy has had an impact on our systems, our culture, and our lives throughout American history. But now that we better understand these systems of oppression, the question is this: What can we do about them?

With Be A Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too, Oluo aims to show how people across America are working to create real positive change in our structures. Looking at many of our most powerful systems—like education, media, labor, health, housing, policing, and more—she highlights what people are doing to create change for intersectional racial equity. She also illustrates various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live.

This book aims to not only be educational, but to inspire action and change. Oluo wishes to take our conversations on race and racism out of a place of pure pain and trauma, and into a place of loving action. Be A Revolution is both an urgent chronicle of this important moment in history, as well as an inspiring and restorative call for action.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from November 20, 2023
      Bestseller Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race) affirms that “everyone has different roles in this revolution” in these enlightening profiles of people who’ve put their anti-racist values into action. Each chapter highlights the tie between racial justice and some other topic—such as gender, disability, policing, education, and the arts—through detailed life stories of activists that center their changing understanding of the world and how they managed challenges. For example, a chapter on Richie Reseda relates how his encounters with Black feminist theory in prison led him to found Success Story, a workshop to help incarcerated men think about how internalized patriarchal ideas have shaped and harmed them. Throughout, Oluo showcases a variety of ways to promote anti-racism, many of them intended to be of use to people for whom anti-racist organizing is not necessarily a central focus of their activism. She also admirably demonstrates how she continues to grow through self-education and reflection, at one point frankly addressing earlier shortcomings in her thinking about disability. Readers will find inspiration and clarity.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from November 15, 2023
      Vivid profiles in activism. Oluo, author of So You Want To Talk About Race, makes race central to an inspiring look at those fighting against the "deep, systemic issues." The author considers punishment and incarceration, gender justice and bodily autonomy, labor and business, disability, the environment, education, and the arts, highlighting men and women who are enacting creative solutions to achieve change. Readers will meet Richie Reseda, who invented Success Stories, a 13-week workshop "that aims to help incarcerated men heal from violent patriarchy and learn how to handle fear, pain, and conflict in healthier ways." The program also connects its alumni with support to find jobs. There's Alice Wong, who has muscular dystrophy and created the Disability Visibility Project, an online resource that offers blog posts, essays, and reports "about ableism, intersectionality, culture, media, and politics from the perspective of disabled people." Oluo, who identifies as Black, queer, and disabled (ADHD, anxiety, and chronic illness), stresses the importance of connecting disability justice work to anti-racist work. "Systemic racism and ableism," she writes, "serve the same core purpose in society: to justify the oppression, exclusion, and exploitation of people based on a manufactured hierarchy of value." For readers aspiring to contribute to societal change, the author ends each chapter with suggestions for interventions in one's own life and community, and she appends the book with a long list of people and organizations that can serve as resources. "So much of the work that happens on the ground is really small things," writes Wong. "Sometimes it's just small, intermittent things. It doesn't have to be a website. It doesn't have to be fully formed." Transformative justice, Oluo writes, "holds people accountable for the harm they cause, and it also holds communities accountable for how they contribute to harm, in order to prevent future harm." An urgent plea for individual and collective action.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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