Heather reviewed See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur
Review of 'See No Stranger' on 'Goodreads'
Valarie Kaur is a Sikh woman from rural California. She was involved in political action in college. She was a witness to the effects of violence on the Sikh community after 9/11. She made a documentary film about it. She also went to Harvard Divinity school and Yale Law.
Her work with communities facing violence has lead her to advocate for a new way of imaging how the world may be. It starts with realizing that we need to try to see people that we disagree with as also human. That doesn't mean allowing them to run over us. It means seeing the pain and brokenness underlying violence and hate and trying to fix the root of the problem.
The book is part memoir and part manifesto. It details her work with Latinx people being harrassed by the police in East Haven CT. She goes to the sites of mass …
Valarie Kaur is a Sikh woman from rural California. She was involved in political action in college. She was a witness to the effects of violence on the Sikh community after 9/11. She made a documentary film about it. She also went to Harvard Divinity school and Yale Law.
Her work with communities facing violence has lead her to advocate for a new way of imaging how the world may be. It starts with realizing that we need to try to see people that we disagree with as also human. That doesn't mean allowing them to run over us. It means seeing the pain and brokenness underlying violence and hate and trying to fix the root of the problem.
The book is part memoir and part manifesto. It details her work with Latinx people being harrassed by the police in East Haven CT. She goes to the sites of mass shootings to grieve with the communities. She works against solitary confinement and mass incarceration. She also tries to find ways to support her own wellbeing in the face of repeated trauma.
I am a huge advocate of imagining the world as you want it to be instead of saying, "This is just how things are." This book spoke to that part of my soul. It made me feel like I'm not the strange one for thinking like this.
I finished this book a few days before the Dobbs decision was handed down by the Supreme Court. Whenever the rage started to overtake me I thought about her words. How would I react to anyone I saw rejoicing about this decision? Cussing them out doesn't reach people. I took a deep breath and opened Facebook. Luckily, I purged most of the remnants of my misspent youth as an evangelical Christian when Trump got elected so I didn't have anyone happy on my timeline. I didn't have to try to see the humanity in them when they were celebrating the downfall of human rights. In that moment I was not ready to reach out to try to embrace understanding. I know I will see it eventually though. I think that some of the techniques that she supports may be helpful. I tend to be a person who walks away from conflict and then cusses them out later to people who agree with me. Maybe I could use some gentle techniques to confront people.
The Revolutionary Love Project is a website that has a lot of the teachings from the book and some of the films that she has made. I will be digging deeper into this work.
https://www.tiktok.com/@myreadingday/video/7113260213112933678?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7105128394421437995
