Broken Earth (1st book - The Fifth Season)

A catastrophic event transforms the landscape of the world. A family is torn apart. A powerful entity rules with an iron fist and pursues fugitives to the ends of the earth. Nothing feels safe, and the world will never be the same.

N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy is a fantastic read for times when everything seems that it is coming undone. Stories help us to process the experiences of our world and imagine possible responses and worlds that could be. Jemisin’s series gives a picture of a world experiencing crises in the political, personal, and environmental and characters respond in journeys of finding survival and forging relationships of collective care.

I find her imagination of the formation of new communities in the midst of the breakdown of empire especially interesting. I didn’t have language for it when first reading the series, but she depicts the formation of anarchist collective communities in the cracks of a world splitting apart. Collective care repeatedly sprouts where empire withers and provides a community that is beautiful, fragile, and essential to survival in this apocalyptic world. Journeying with her characters is a mournful but wonderful reflection on human experience, crisis, family, love, and what we might do to survive as our own assumptions about stability begin to crumble.

Imperial Radch (1st book - Ancillary Justice)

Similarly, Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy explores the complexities of awakening to and surviving in the midst of empire. What I particularly love about this series (as well as Broken Earth) is that unlike much of classic sci-fi, the focus of the journey is not the epic overthrow of the world's corrupted imperial order. Rather, it is the much more tangible and relevant journey that each of us can actually relate to - the work of cultivating love, beauty, and community on the tiny scale of our own lives, continuing to hum little songs and pour tea into beautiful tiny cups in acts of hope and resistance to the empire bearing down upon us. In small, grassroots cultivation of hope, joy, and love, seeds are planted that spring up over time into the resistance that can one day transform the larger picture.

That is the picture of the hero's task in Leckie’s world as I see it and also the vision of the Kingdom of God painted by Jesus in stories like the parable of the mustard seed that grows into a broad plant, the parable of the farmer sowing seeds, or the parable of the leaven that eventually reaches the whole lump of dough. It's also the vision of transformation in the dreams of anarchist theory - transforming the world through networks of collective care that bubble up and simultaneously critique the state through counter-practice and make it obsolete and able to wither away (more on that to come).

Both of these series won multiple of the major sci-fi awards and I'd highly recommend that you check them out, as well as the authors’ other works. Let's chat when you do!

Action: Expand Mental Health Care

From The People's Lobby:

Therapists in Illinois are overworked and underpaid. Most private insurers pay therapists at minimal rates, which often forces them to stop accepting insurance. This creates limited access to mental health care for patients and results in significant shortages in care for people experiencing mental health crises. The refusal of insurers to pay providers fairly drastically limits access to care for Illinoisans. It is time for these unjust practices to end! We need mental health care, and our providers deserve to be compensated fairly for their expertise and skills.

The Improve Network Adequacy and Access for Behavioral Health Bill (HB1085) will require private insurers to pay therapists more adequately. This will help address our state’s shortage of therapists and make critical mental health care available to more Illinoisans

Take action here through this easy letter to your representatives.

Historical Heroes: Martin Luther King Jr.

I'll regularly highlight historical heroes, often in the week of their birth or death. This Friday is the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. (15 January 1929-4 April 1968) was a minister and activist. He was born in Atlanta and his father was pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, through which he was deeply shaped by church, but also wrestling with doubts. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, he saw the impacts of segregation and unjust policy and also saw his family offer resistance to it. He studied at Morehouse College and worked nearby tobacco fields. Then he studied for ministry at Crozer Seminary and Boston University. He was then a pastor in Montgomery for five years, during which he was the spokesperson for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found and lead the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He led this group until his death, and they practiced nonviolent protest and resistance that drew attention to the harms of Jim Crow and were a key element of the civil rights movement. He returned to pastor at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta and continued to be a leader for civil rights, traveling, speaking, and leading campaigns around the country. He advocated not only on segregation but on voting rights, housing, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. He was assassinated in 1968 at age 39.