The “Living in Good Relation” Friend-Sourced Collection

Earlier this month I asked social media friends and acquaintances to suggest literary works, individuals, films, and music that they find inspire/exude/discuss “radical hope” as it relates to relationships, humanity, or the environment. These are their responses.

Friend

• The Kid With a Bike https://youtu.be/Jfz-IGE66vg
• First Reformed (2018) https://youtu.be/hCF5Y8dQpR4
• “Impossible Soul” by Sufjan Stevens: https://youtu.be/RFXzbe2UAR0

Professor of History

• Shane Claiborne’s “Another World is Possible” audiobooks/DVD
• Bible, Micah 4:3–4
• Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” https://www.poets.org/.../poem/let-america-be-america-again

Professor of Theology

• An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
• Preemptive Love Coalition — https://preemptivelove.org/

Graduate Student Colleague

• MLK — Mountaintop Speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixfwGLxRJU8
• Common — Be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MedYGL45DnE
• Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy
• Equal Justice Initiative
• Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistable Revolution
• Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer personify radical hope
• Marx and Engels — Communist Manifesto
• Khalid Hosseini — And the Mountains Echoed
• Richard Wright’s “the Warmth of Other Suns” from Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth

“I was leaving the South
to fling myself into the unknown . . .
I was taking a part of the South
to transplant in alien soil,
to see if it could grow differently,
if it could drink of new and cool rains,
bend in strange winds,
respond to the warmth of other suns
and, perhaps, to bloom”

• The Fire Next Time by Baldwin (I found it hopeful, but others might not)

McNair Scholar and Graduate Student

• Toni Morrison’s Beloved
• Happy Feet (2006)

Research Fellow

• Kiki (2017)

Twitter Historian

• Mavis Staples and the tradition of spirituals in the Long Black Freedom Struggle
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcCm_ySBslk
• Aretha Franklin, Lift Every Voice and Sing
• “The Negro in American Culture” a group discussion (Baldwin, Hughes, Hansberry, Capouya, Kazin)

• Mavis Staples “Eyes On The Prize”
• Interview with Fannie Lou Hamer (1968)

Family Friend

• Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation

HS Friend

• Nayyirah Waheed — Salt; Nejma
• Rupi Kaur — Milk & Honey; The Sun and Her Flowers

Pastor

• The Liturgy of Abundance — the Myth of Scarcity:
  http://therivardreport.com/.../the_liturgy_of_abundance.pdf

Sister

• Ani Difranco- “As Is” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYe2NhwXhqk
• Ani Difranco- “Buildings and Bridges” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9elTQix5oQ

Manatee Friend

• Big miracle (2012)
• Joel Sartore- The Photo Ark: One Man’s Quest to Document the World’s Animals https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151125-animals-rare-species-science-photo-ark-joel-sartore/
• “Life of Jane” — Documentary on Jane Goodall

Mom

• “This is Me” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjxugyZCfuw

Contributors:

Debbie Mendoza, Jamal Galves, Brandon Render, Amy Ray, Aaron Bolerjack Brit Bolerjack, Diomné Habet, Adam McNeil, Christopher Mendoza, Mike Vierow, Andrea Renee Lauver, Jess De La Cruz, Timothy Osburn