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A review by yikesbmg
The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs
4.0
I read this book because a few of people I respect (adrienne maree brown, Aminatou Sow) have referred Grace Lee Boggs at one point or another. I wanted to read GLB’s autobiography but it wasn’t on Libby, so I settled for this instead.
I found myself wanting specifics over and over in this book, which contains mostly essays and one interview at the end. I think a lot about scale and governance, and GLB sort of sets of the scale question aside since we are not at that stage of things. Her stance on government is a bit unclear because she’s so focused on grassroots, communal efforts and encourages people not to turn to representative democracy or state powers to solve issues. While I understand her rationale (US economic system that created the middle class was fully a result of colonialism, we win while half the world suffers) I, at this point, refuse to give up on the idea of having functional governments that can do good work at scale.
Setting that side though, I am giving it 4 stars because it opened up my perspective in a way I hadn’t expected it to. I credit this opening to (1) how the book talks about uncertainty and hope and (2) GLB’s emphasis that we create the next major revolution in the U.S., we can’t just expect pat revolutions to unfold again. Those were the two big takeaways for me from this text.
I found myself wanting specifics over and over in this book, which contains mostly essays and one interview at the end. I think a lot about scale and governance, and GLB sort of sets of the scale question aside since we are not at that stage of things. Her stance on government is a bit unclear because she’s so focused on grassroots, communal efforts and encourages people not to turn to representative democracy or state powers to solve issues. While I understand her rationale (US economic system that created the middle class was fully a result of colonialism, we win while half the world suffers) I, at this point, refuse to give up on the idea of having functional governments that can do good work at scale.
Setting that side though, I am giving it 4 stars because it opened up my perspective in a way I hadn’t expected it to. I credit this opening to (1) how the book talks about uncertainty and hope and (2) GLB’s emphasis that we create the next major revolution in the U.S., we can’t just expect pat revolutions to unfold again. Those were the two big takeaways for me from this text.