We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice

3.5 stars rounded up. It's hard to rate it any higher because it is an essay, not a work tackling this issue in depth.

This put some sophisticated words to some thoughts I've had, so I enjoyed that. The main question here is, when are callouts/cancelation appropriate? How do we mesh them with abolition and transformative justice?

In situations of great power discrepancies, severe wrongs, or exhausted alternatives - Brown sees callouts as a valuable action. But also something that should be taken on with a lot of thoughtful intention.

Some good quotes:

"...destroying a person doesn’t destroy all of the systems that allow harmful people to do harm. These takedowns make it seem as if massive problems are determined at an individual level, as if these individuals set a course as children to become abusers, misogynists, racists, liars."

“'Why?' makes it impossible to ignore that we might be capable of a similar transgression in similar circumstances. We don’t want to see that."

Considering the title of the book, adrienne maree brown uses the terms 'cancel' and 'cancellation' far less than I would have expected, and the same for 'cancel culture'. The title grabs attention, and works to place itself inside the 'cancel culture' conversation, as opposed to uncritically accepting a reactionary term as an accurate description of the problem brown tackles. The booklet begins with an acknowledgement of its limitations and a reflection on the flaws of its core chapter, 'Unthinkable Thoughts'. This chapter, which was originally published online and appears as an edited version in the booklet, recieved some valid criticism, which brown acknowledges ahead of its appearance. It's not clear which parts of the essay have changed, which is something I would have found useful for comparison. However the original essay is available online! brown can be vague in places, and at times her language can be difficult to parse if unfamiliar with the use of terms inside radical/transformative justice or mediation communities. Specifically, the use of the word 'hold' was unfamiliar to me, and its vagueness can make it difficult to interpret unfamiliar terms through context. That said, this is probably only relevant for relative outsiders. The size of the book makes it an excellent introduction for people just getting started, like myself. Without repeating every point made in it, I believe this booklet will be critically useful for me as a source of definitions and before-we-start questions for inter-community conflicts and justice. I don't think it's a complete primer on transformative justice - more an accessible introduction to the movement - but brown puts a name to a problem that hangs over our heads. By doing this, she gives us our own terms and language for the problem of 'evisceration of character' inside our radical communities, so that we don't have to operate with reactionary terms that only approximate what we do. Its length, price, and mostly-accessible language make it easy to recommend.