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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
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: Death, Sexism, Violence, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, War, and Classism
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
andyirwin89's review against another edition
3.0
I like an author that challenges me to think more clearly and also challenges my assumptions and default positions. Hope in the Dark is a frank case for hope and the necessity of compromise, incremental achievement and broad church activism.
A bit lacking in structure in parts, but nourishing nonetheless.
A bit lacking in structure in parts, but nourishing nonetheless.
knitswithbeer's review against another edition
3.0
I really wanted to love this book.
It's a little dated, being pre-Trump.
I do agree that there is a politics of hope and that we need to dare to dream.
It's a little dated, being pre-Trump.
I do agree that there is a politics of hope and that we need to dare to dream.
breenmachine's review against another edition
2.0
The first 4 chapters really tugged on my heart strings and made me love hope. However, after that it all went downhill. It was a nice reminder of how the world has changed since this book was written, but it didn't instill a lot of hope in my after Chapter 5. It also became monotonous to read and lost my interest, especially in the "Millennium" chapters.
It was interesting to read about the Bush/Gore election in this book - because it sounds eerily like today's political climate - and I was too young at the time to fully comprehend it.
Quotes:
"If there is one thing we can draw from where we are now and where we were then, it is that the unimaginable is ordinary, that the way forward is almost never a straight line you can glance down but a convoluted path of surprises, gifts, and afflictions you prepare for by accepting your blind spots as well as your intuitions."
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” -Martin Luther King Jr.
"Havel said then, The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent
on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed."
"Despair demands less of us, it’s more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity— seeing the troubles in this world—and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable."
"Hope is not a door, but a sense that there might be a door at some point, some way out of the problems of the present moment even before that way is found or followed."
It was interesting to read about the Bush/Gore election in this book - because it sounds eerily like today's political climate - and I was too young at the time to fully comprehend it.
Quotes:
"If there is one thing we can draw from where we are now and where we were then, it is that the unimaginable is ordinary, that the way forward is almost never a straight line you can glance down but a convoluted path of surprises, gifts, and afflictions you prepare for by accepting your blind spots as well as your intuitions."
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” -Martin Luther King Jr.
"Havel said then, The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent
on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed."
"Despair demands less of us, it’s more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity— seeing the troubles in this world—and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable."
"Hope is not a door, but a sense that there might be a door at some point, some way out of the problems of the present moment even before that way is found or followed."