Draw Your Weapons

Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.

An amazement, Sentilles's fractured meditation on art, war, and the deep pangs of suffering that reverberate from them is my favorite nonfiction book of the year. With a style that seems to be illuminated by the art theory of Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, and John Berger, Sentilles goes in many deep directions at once throughout this dazzler. Her personal stories about her friendships with a dying WWII-era pacifist and a former soldier who worked at the Abu Ghraib prison are the glue that holds all the anecdotes, factoids, and shards of poetic thoughts together. It's reminiscent of Nick Flynn and David Shields at times, but with so many layers of empathy and sad wonder about war. Knowing that Sentilles was once studying to be a priest only gave me a hint of how deeply she feels about humanity and peace. This book should make her a saint. I feel changed by Draw Your Weapons and I'll never forget it. Recommended By Kevin S., Powells.com

The words you'll find here overflow with empathy and grace. Reading as both a theory-laden call to action and a deeply felt spiritual screed, Sentilles will lead you on a journey through the horrors of violence and direct you toward the possibility of peace. No book has ever convinced me more of our imperative to create, to throw healing words into this whirlpool of humanity while amplifying the voices of those who need it most. Recommended By Cosima C., Powells.com

Sarah Sentilles’s arresting book is a pastiche of many disciplines that examine art and war, and how making art is one response to war. She grapples with what our reaction to violence should be, and what impact one person’s actions can have, situating this examination within a historical context. Recommended By Mary Jo S., Powells.com

A single book might not change the world. But this utterly original meditation on art and war might transform the way you see the world — and that makes all the difference.

"How to live in the face of so much suffering? What difference can one person make in this beautiful, imperfect, and imperiled world?" 

Through a dazzling combination of memoir, history, reporting, visual culture, literature, and theology, Sarah Sentilles offers an impassioned defense of life lived by peace and principle. It is a literary collage with an urgent hope at its core: that art might offer tools for remaking the world.

In Draw Your Weapons, Sentilles tells the true stories of Howard, a conscientious objector during World War II, and Miles, a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib, and in the process she challenges conventional thinking about how war is waged, witnessed, and resisted. The pacifist and the soldier both create art in response to war: Howard builds a violin; Miles paints portraits of detainees. With echoes of Susan Sontag and Maggie Nelson, Sentilles investigates images of violence from the era of slavery to the drone age. In doing so, she wrestles with some of our most profound questions: What does it take to inspire compassion? What impact can one person have? How should we respond to violence when it feels like it can’t be stopped?

Draw Your Weapons stirs and confronts, disturbs and illuminates. A single book might not change the world, but this lucid, radiant, and utterly original meditation on art and war might transform the way you see the world — and that makes all the difference.

"This is a beautiful, harrowing, and moving collage that portrays the making of art as a powerful response to making war. Every reader will feel profoundly changed by it." Alice Elliott Dark, author of In the Gloaming

"A beautiful, haunting book so original that it is a genre unto itself — a poem, a sermon, a polemic, a memoir, a narrative... I won’t be able to think of our era of constant conflict without recalling Sentilles’s lessons, her imagery, and her prophetic voice." Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains the World

"Draw Your Weapons is as much about peace as it is about war; it is as much about life as it is about death. Sarah Sentilles, with her passionate, clear-eyed prose and her brilliant, generous mind, confronts us with the realities of standing idly by in a world that urgently needs voices of peace and reconciliation. She puts real faces on the stories we hear all the time in the news and forget about. The stories in this book — about violence and love and endurance and vulnerability — are unforgettable, and they are very much the stories of our time. You will be riveted, educated, implicated, and changed by this book." Emily Rapp, author of The Still Point of the Turning World

"With a stunning weave of ideas and images, Sarah Sentilles shows us the world we’ve broken, and she shows us how soldiers, prisoners, artists, thinkers — all of us — are, piece by piece, repairing it. Fearless, stirring, rhythmic, this book pulses with energy and is full of insights, dark yet ultimately hopeful." Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

A single book might not change the world. But this utterly original meditation on art and war might transform the way you see the world and that makes all the difference.
How to live in the face of so much suffering? What difference can one person make in this beautiful, imperfect, and imperiled world?
Through a dazzling combination of memoir, history, reporting, visual culture, literature, and theology, Sarah Sentilles offers an impassioned defense of life lived by peace and principle. It is a literary collage with an urgent hope at its core: that art might offer tools for remaking the world.
In Draw Your Weapons, Sentilles tells the true stories of Howard, a conscientious objector during World War II, and Miles, a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib, and in the process she challenges conventional thinking about how war is waged, witnessed, and resisted. The pacifist and the soldier both create art in response to war: Howard builds a violin; Miles paints portraits of detainees. With echoes of Susan Sontag and MaggieNelson, she investigates images of violence from the era of slavery to the drone age. In doing so, Sentilles wrestles with some of our most profound questions: What does it take to inspire compassion? What impact can one person have? How should we respond to violence when it feels like it can t be stopped?
Draw Your Weapons stirs and confronts, disturbs and illuminates. A single book might not change the world, but this lucid, radiant, and utterly original meditation on art and war might transform the way you see the world and that makes all the difference.
Advance praise for Draw Your Weapons
With a stunning weave of ideas and images, Sarah Sentilles shows us the world we ve broken, and she shows us how soldiers, prisoners, artists, thinkers all of us are, piece by piece, repairing it. Fearless, stirring, rhythmic, this book pulses with energy and is full of insights, dark yet ultimately hopeful. Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
Draw Your Weapons is as much about peace as it is about war; it is as much about life as it is about death. Sarah Sentilles, with her passionate, clear-eyed prose and her brilliant, generous mind, confronts us with the realities of standing idly by in a world that urgently needs voices of peace and reconciliation. She puts real faces on the stories we hear all the time in the news and forget about. The stories in this book about violence and love and endurance and vulnerability are unforgettable, and they are very much the stories of our time. You will be riveted, educated, implicated, and changed by this book. Emily Rapp, author of The Still Point of the Turning World
This is a beautiful, harrowing, and moving collage that portrays the making of art as a powerful response to making war. Every reader will feel profoundly changed by it. Alice Elliott Dark, author of In the Gloaming"

Sarah Sentilles is a writer, critical theorist, scholar of religion, and author of many books, including Breaking Up with God: A Love Story. Her next book, Draw Your Weapons, will be published by Random House in July 2017. She earned a bachelor's degree at Yale and master's and doctoral degrees at Harvard.

At the core of her scholarship, writing, and activism is a commitment to investigating the roles language, images, and practices play in oppression, violence, social transformation, and justice movements. She has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland State University, California State University Channel Islands, and Willamette University, where she was the Mark and Melody Teppola Presidential Distinguished Visiting Professor.

I first wrote Draw Your Weapons as a novel. I spent years working on the manuscript, and when it was finished, I sent it to a friend willing to give it an honest, critical read. “This isn’t working,” she said when we talked a few weeks later. I was devastated...

Read More»