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rosietomyn's review against another edition
2.0
Having followed Rebecca Solnit for years, and having thoroughly enjoying so many of her works, I am baffled by how little I connected to this one. Hope in the Dark, even with its brief 2016 update, feels disjointed and dated. I found it more depressing than hopeful.
pattydsf's review against another edition
4.0
“To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on your futures, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.”
“Your opponents would love you to believe that it's hopeless, that you have no power, that there's no reason to act, that you can't win. Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away.”
“Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.”
This short collection of essays was first published in 2004. Solnit then updated this book with additional information and essays in 2016, before the election of our present President. I am including this information in my review to remind me that all was not rosy before 2016. We have had bad government before and we will have it again. However, we all need reminders that hope is worth having and Solnit’s writings gives me that hope.
I use the word “hope” a lot. I tell friends that I hope they are well, that they have a happy birthday, and other good things. It is a word that I have trouble finding a synonym for. The thesaurus connected to the Word software includes the following words as synonyms: confidence, expectation, optimism and faith. These words are good, but don’t have the resonance of “hope”, in my opinion.
Solnit’s essays help me remember why I like the word “hope” and why we need to keep hoping that things will improve. I am especially glad for her reminder that we cannot accomplish everything at once and we are making headway in changing the world to be a more just and compassionate place.
If you are struggling with the present administration in DC or a local political problem, like our issues with pipelines in Virginia, I strongly urge you to pick up these essays. Solnit does not solve all our problems, but she gives us courage to keep working towards a better future.
“Your opponents would love you to believe that it's hopeless, that you have no power, that there's no reason to act, that you can't win. Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away.”
“Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.”
This short collection of essays was first published in 2004. Solnit then updated this book with additional information and essays in 2016, before the election of our present President. I am including this information in my review to remind me that all was not rosy before 2016. We have had bad government before and we will have it again. However, we all need reminders that hope is worth having and Solnit’s writings gives me that hope.
I use the word “hope” a lot. I tell friends that I hope they are well, that they have a happy birthday, and other good things. It is a word that I have trouble finding a synonym for. The thesaurus connected to the Word software includes the following words as synonyms: confidence, expectation, optimism and faith. These words are good, but don’t have the resonance of “hope”, in my opinion.
Solnit’s essays help me remember why I like the word “hope” and why we need to keep hoping that things will improve. I am especially glad for her reminder that we cannot accomplish everything at once and we are making headway in changing the world to be a more just and compassionate place.
If you are struggling with the present administration in DC or a local political problem, like our issues with pipelines in Virginia, I strongly urge you to pick up these essays. Solnit does not solve all our problems, but she gives us courage to keep working towards a better future.
andrewotey's review against another edition
4.0
Lots of really good stuff in here. Some of the language gets a little too leftist extreme in places, even for me, but the overall message is one I really think is great: take wins where you can and then keep fighting for more. Solnit does a great job of calling people to action while also critiquing some of the puritanical aspects of many progressive activists. She originally wrote it in 2004 after the Iraq invasion and GWB's re-election, which to her felt like a helpless time (much like 2016 does to me). A passage that nicely illustrates this: “People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.” 4.5 stars
susannareads's review against another edition
4.0
Wonderful and important ideas, but this book is not for everyone. The language can be convoluted, and as much as I love Solnit, she assumes a lot about her reader's knowledge of global politics and activist movements. This book is not super accessible and is not exactly fun to read, but it taught me a lot and galvanized my fighting spirit.
fragglerocker's review against another edition
4.0
I forgot how challenging I find Solnit's prose and this is why it took me so long to finish this book. I'd recommend it if you'd like an alternative perspective on how to think about being as a leftist or liberal. My favorite chapter/essay was the one detailing the incredible kindness and community of the survivors of September 11 on that fateful day. It's so important to be aware of the thousands of small positive changes that make the world a better, more equitable place, while also continuing to work for larger changes.
A few choice quotes:
"[H]istory is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension."
"The only story many leftists know how to tell is the story that is the underside of the dominant culture's story, more often than the stuff that never makes it into the news, and all news had a bias in favor of suddenness, violence, and disaster that overlooks groundwells, sea changes, and alternatives, the forms in which popular power most often manifests itself. Their gloomy premise is that the powers that be are not telling you the whole truth, but the truth they tell is also incomplete. They conceive of the truth as pure bad news, appoint themselves the delivers of it, and keep telling it over and over again. Eventually, they come to look for the downside in any emerging story, even in apparent victories--and in each other: something about this task seems to give some of them the souls of meter maids and dogcatchers."
And finally,
"Violence is the power of the state; imagination and nonviolence the power of civil society."
A few choice quotes:
"[H]istory is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension."
"The only story many leftists know how to tell is the story that is the underside of the dominant culture's story, more often than the stuff that never makes it into the news, and all news had a bias in favor of suddenness, violence, and disaster that overlooks groundwells, sea changes, and alternatives, the forms in which popular power most often manifests itself. Their gloomy premise is that the powers that be are not telling you the whole truth, but the truth they tell is also incomplete. They conceive of the truth as pure bad news, appoint themselves the delivers of it, and keep telling it over and over again. Eventually, they come to look for the downside in any emerging story, even in apparent victories--and in each other: something about this task seems to give some of them the souls of meter maids and dogcatchers."
And finally,
"Violence is the power of the state; imagination and nonviolence the power of civil society."
novella42's review against another edition
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
5.0
This short essay collection is the best balm I know for activist burnout and despair.
I estimate I've read this book six times in six years. I'm thinking of making a tradition of listening to the audiobook at the start of the new year, for my mental health and to continue to develop my resilience against despair and inaction. I don't know of any other short yet comprehensive resource of the many victories of activism throughout history. None of this caliber, anyway.
In some ways it reminds me of James Burke's classic show Connections, but instead of showing the ripple effects of scientific discoveries and inventions throughout history, Solnit shows the ripple effects of a different kind of 'technology': collective social action throughout history. At one point she quotes Walter Brueggeman: "Memory produces hope in the same way that amnesia produces despair." Her aim is to help us remember.
In this quick 5-hr audiobook, she offers up an alternative to narratives that focus only on defeats and cruelties and injustices. She honors those, but aims to tell the more complicated and accurate stories that make room for the best and worst, atrocities and liberations, grief and joy. She holds up memories like a guiding light, and while the book isn't perfect, it never fails to show me a glimmer of my own power, and my own hope.
My favorite passage, that has helped me through some extremely dark moments:
I estimate I've read this book six times in six years. I'm thinking of making a tradition of listening to the audiobook at the start of the new year, for my mental health and to continue to develop my resilience against despair and inaction. I don't know of any other short yet comprehensive resource of the many victories of activism throughout history. None of this caliber, anyway.
In some ways it reminds me of James Burke's classic show Connections, but instead of showing the ripple effects of scientific discoveries and inventions throughout history, Solnit shows the ripple effects of a different kind of 'technology': collective social action throughout history. At one point she quotes Walter Brueggeman: "Memory produces hope in the same way that amnesia produces despair." Her aim is to help us remember.
In this quick 5-hr audiobook, she offers up an alternative to narratives that focus only on defeats and cruelties and injustices. She honors those, but aims to tell the more complicated and accurate stories that make room for the best and worst, atrocities and liberations, grief and joy. She holds up memories like a guiding light, and while the book isn't perfect, it never fails to show me a glimmer of my own power, and my own hope.
My favorite passage, that has helped me through some extremely dark moments:
"Sometimes the earth closes over this moment and it has no obvious consequences; sometimes empires crumble and ideologies fall away like shackles. But you don’t know beforehand.
"People in official institutions devoutly believe they hold the power that matters, though the power we grant them can often be taken back; the violence commanded by governments and militaries often fails, and nonviolent direct-action campaigns often succeed.
"The sleeping giant is one name for the public; when it wakes up, when we wake up, we are no longer only the public: we are civil society, the superpower whose nonviolent means are sometimes, for a shining moment, more powerful than violence, more powerful than regimes and armies. We write history with our feet and with our presence and our collective voice and vision.
"And yet, and of course, everything in the mainstream media suggests that popular resistance is ridiculous, pointless, or criminal, unless it is far away, was long ago, or, ideally, both.
"These are the forces that prefer the giant remain asleep. Together we are very powerful, and we have a seldom-told, seldom-remembered history of victories and transformations that can give us confidence that yes, we can change the world because we have many times before.
"You row forward looking back, and telling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant of our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future."
Content Warnings
Minor: Classism, Sexism, War, Violence, Xenophobia, Death, and Islamophobia
anna_0001's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
abbyperryman's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.5