A review by heidihaverkamp
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit

4.0

It's easy these days to despair. Solnit warns against this - reminding us that the world is always changing, that we should not expect unencumbered progressive progress, that societal change is more often gradual than overarching or monocultural. She says insightful things like: "Hopes locates itself in the premises that we don't know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act." (xiv) Uncertainty is hopeful? Wow. But it's true, isn't it? The first few chapters of this book were most moving to me; the rest are essays about very particular places and issues, like magazine articles. This is probably a book to check out of the library rather than purchase. But those first chapters - I am still thinking about them, weeks later, and they are helping me keep on keeping on.