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mollyculhane 's review for:
Radical Hope
by Caro De Robertis
The introduction frames this book well: while many valuable books have addressed the challenges and opportunities of the Trump era as “soloists,” this one addresses it as an “orchestra.” Both forms have their place, and I can certainly see how Radical Hope works as an orchestra—each author writes beautifully and compellingly, weaving together common themes, referencing one another’s stories and ideas. The format of the epistolary essay does not feel gimmicky, and instead focuses the reader’s attention on why justice, hope, and human rights matter so much right now. Together, the essays in this book make an argument about what America is and ought to be, how we got to where we are, and where and how we can go from here. Radical Hope gets the job done as an orchestra.
But the music metaphor that de Robertis presents in the introduction, and the essays that followed, reminded me of another (I think better) way to look at this book—and at the meaning of our era more broadly. In her seminal Black Feminist essay, “’What Has Happened Here’: The Politics of Difference in Women’s History and Feminist Politics,” Elsa Barkley Brown introduces the framework of “gumbo ya ya,” “a creole term that means ‘Everybody talks at once,’” to talk about history in a way that respects intersectionality and accounts for complexity. Brown explains how gumbo ya ya (and the jazz music it influenced) produces more rigorous, more truthful, and more grassroots-oriented history than the “classical music” model that so many historians unknowingly favor, with its insistence on “surrounding silence.” Radical Hope makes a fine orchestra, but an excellent jazz band. Much of what is good about this book is its diversity of voices, genres, moods, purposes. The authors frequently contradict one another, presenting priorities and worldviews that are sometimes at odds. For an orchestra, and certainly for a soloist, this dissonance might be a flaw—but here, it is a great strength. I think Radical Hope is worth a read, both for the lovely writing and thought-provoking ideas the authors present and for the vital democratic impulse from which it emerged.
But the music metaphor that de Robertis presents in the introduction, and the essays that followed, reminded me of another (I think better) way to look at this book—and at the meaning of our era more broadly. In her seminal Black Feminist essay, “’What Has Happened Here’: The Politics of Difference in Women’s History and Feminist Politics,” Elsa Barkley Brown introduces the framework of “gumbo ya ya,” “a creole term that means ‘Everybody talks at once,’” to talk about history in a way that respects intersectionality and accounts for complexity. Brown explains how gumbo ya ya (and the jazz music it influenced) produces more rigorous, more truthful, and more grassroots-oriented history than the “classical music” model that so many historians unknowingly favor, with its insistence on “surrounding silence.” Radical Hope makes a fine orchestra, but an excellent jazz band. Much of what is good about this book is its diversity of voices, genres, moods, purposes. The authors frequently contradict one another, presenting priorities and worldviews that are sometimes at odds. For an orchestra, and certainly for a soloist, this dissonance might be a flaw—but here, it is a great strength. I think Radical Hope is worth a read, both for the lovely writing and thought-provoking ideas the authors present and for the vital democratic impulse from which it emerged.