Hope is resistance and rebellion and these six books inspire hope and courage, helping you resist tyranny and injustice. Hope is also resistance reading, especially books about hope! Many of us are still circling around somewhere in the stages of grief. Part of what we need right now is hope. Hope isn’t blind optimism. That type of hope is bigoted and useless. Pie in the sky wishing for the privileged is not going to help us. What we need is a strong courageous hope that comes to life in memories and stories of struggle and survival. Hope is a process as much as a feeling. Hope comes from a profound trust that there is and can be goodness, love, and justice and doing something to make those things real.
I recommend to you books that have grounded me in a just and realistic hope. Three of these books are fiction. These novels and novella are stories that provide you with an opportunity to image how things can be better, and relish the good, the kindness, and the compassion in the world. Three of the books are non-fiction and focus on hope from the perspective of spirituality, political organizing, and philosophy.
All the books I discuss in these Recommended Resistance Reading posts are generally available at public libraries, bookstores, and through online booksellers. Please purchase them used or from independent or minority owned bookstores, if you’re going to buy a copy.
FICTION
A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers is a utopian, not dystopian, work of science fiction about a world that has gone through the worst of ecological devastation and over-reliance on technology run amok and come out on the other side. The story centers on a monk and a robot who form a unique friendship and together explore what it means to be human, to be good, and to be alive.
The Life Impossible by Matt Haig is an exemplary work of magical realism that deals with themes including ecological collapse, political corruption, and person integrity. A mysterious energy or being found in the ocean of a Spanish island sustains and heals the planet and its people. The protagonists fight against political power and corruption that endanger the environment.
Hope Punk: Hope is an Act of Resistance by Preston Norton is a YA novel about a teenager who battles spiritually abusive Christian fundamentalism with queer family and friends who finds out that hope isn’t just an emotion, it’s a tool of rebellion and survival. And as all punks know, love and music are such tools as well.
“Hope Punk” is also the name of an entire genre of science fiction. The term was coined by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland in a 2017 tumblr post that went viral across other platforms as well, where she wrote “The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.” Grimdark stories are nihilistic, dystopian, amoral, and violent. In grimdark stories there are no heroes, even the protagonists you might come to root for aren’t great people. The mood tends to be cynical and disheartening. Nothing matters and what if it did? Hopepunk is the opposite. And although there’s debate about whether hopepunk is a sub-genre, it certainly is a theme and a trope and vibe. What makes it punk is the anti-establishment and resistance to oppression present in the work. Alexandra Rowland further explained her take on hopepunk in essays and interviews. She noted that Hopepunk is a refutation of the glass is half empty lazy nihilism of grimdark. Hopepunk reminds us, as Rowland noted in an interview “kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.”
NONFICTION
HOPE: A User’s Manual by Maryann McKibben Dana is self-help workbook for training yourself to be more hopeful. McKibben Dana is a Presbyterian minister and this work does have Christian spiritual references (not too many for a non-Christian reader), but she is careful to provide alternate wording and ways of thinking of things if a Christian approach doesn’t work for you. The books is organized into short chapters of only a couple pages each with questions for reflection at the end along with a practical challenge such as “write a poem that uses the phrase ‘hope draws near when’… or “take a walk in nature and find an imperfect natural object to remind yourself imperfect is beautiful.”
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown (not a typo, she spells her name this way) is a reflection on the need for joy and pleasure to sustain us, especially in the work of fighting injustice and creating beloved community. Fun and pleasure are not luxuries reserved for the privileged and powerful, but the birthright of being human.
Embracing Hope: On Freedom, Responsibility, and the Meaning of Life by Viktor E. Frankl is a collection of interviews, lectures, and articles spanning decades. All them revolve around Frankl’s central philosophical theme of surviving and creating meaning even in the face of injustice and death.
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