Review: See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur
Release Date: June 16, 2020 from One World
One of the hardest things we can do as humans is to love our enemies. It’s one of those precepts that is easier said than done, but civil rights lawyer, activist, and filmmaker Valarie Kaur has given us a book that can help us to do this work.
In See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, Kaur provides us a book that is part memoir and part how to manual on how to practice what she describes as “revolutionary love”. She defines revolutionary love as the active decisions humans make to wonder about others, our opponents, and ourselves. This act of wonder, she says, will help make the world a better place. Failing to wonder ultimately leads to violence against people who we consider the other.
In her book, Kaur describes in vivid detail how many men in her own Sikh community were killed after 9/11 because ignorant, racist people assumed they were Muslim terrorists. She chronicles a must read account of the 2012 Oak Creek massacre, which was the most violent hate crime against Sikhs in American history. She is also frank about the verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse that was inflicted on her by the hands of men in her Sikh community. In this book she describes the steps she and the families of hate crime victims took to wonder about their transgressors. Ultimately she finds that there are no monsters in this world only wounded humans.
Kaur’s writing is beautiful, there are so many quotes in here that are gems.
I learned alot from this book especially as it relates to Sikhism, its origins, the significance of the turban, and even some shabads, sacred Sikh songs.
This is a perfect book to read in our current moment. Many Americans are racially segregated by neighborhoods, houses of worship, politics, etc. This segregation results in alot of people being fearful of the other, which leads to the senseless killings of many people, especially people of color. Reading this book will help readers live out the words of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, who stated “I see no stranger. I see no enemy.” Kaur’s book gives us the tools to become warrior-sages in the never ending fight for equality for all people.
Thanks to NetGalley, One World, and Valarie Kaur for a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
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