Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
What is the meaning of darkness and struggle? What is the light that we all seek - in politics as in our personal lives? In the shared life of democracy, we need each other's stories of perseverance.
Eighteen writers respond to the challenge of upholding basic values in a time when our politics seem to have become weird, scary, and undemocratic. Personal stories and reflections weave a wary kind of hopefulness: no darkness lasts forever.
Moments on a hiking trail, a funeral, or a voyage at sea - family histories and personal credos -show how we have always had to measure our lives in resolve and in realism, and not yield either to fantasy or despair. Includes essays by David Oates, Tina Tau, John Brantingham, Andy Smart, Heidi Beierle, Bess Bacall, Kamala Bremer, Sonya Huber, Alison Towle Moore, Jill Elliott, Lois Ruskai Melina, Mare Hake, Seth Michael White, Leah Stenson, Rachael Duke, Diane Josefowiczm, and Edward Wolf. Poems by Jeremy Cantor, Eleanor Berry, Maria James-Thiaw, Marilyn Johnston, Suzy Harris, Annie Lightfoot, and Paulann Petersen.
Synopsis
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Essays. In 2016 Americans asked: What kind of darkness is this? What is the quality of light? This book gives citizens of a dark time a glittering crown of light--testimony, resonant questions, stories of engagement with confusion, and songs of restoration. Following an introduction by David Oates setting the book's offerings in the tradition of deep thinkers from Hannah Arendt to Adrienne Rich, COME SHINING delivers one articulate companion after another in our mutual pilgrimage toward a new way to be a community, a nation, and a world.
These are not feel-good reassurances; they are sustaining reports of struggle, inquiry, and vision--a book for the backpack of a traveler toward our better destiny.