Dear Friends & Family:

My book comes out tomorrow! SEE NO STRANGER: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love is my life’s work. It is my deepest offering, from my heart to yours.

I wrote this book for you — for all of us who feel breathless in this moment as we are grieving and raging and bleeding and fighting and trying to show up for the people in our lives and in the streets. I believe your breathlessness is a sign of your bravery. It means that you are awake to this unprecedented time in history. This book is a guide for breathing and pushing to birth a new future.

Michelle Alexander calls the book “a moral compass for our time.”

I could not imagine how urgent this book would be — it includes stories about reimagining policing and prisons, centering anti-black racism, surviving police brutality and sexual assault, harnessing our rage, moving through grief, healing, and finding longevity in the struggle. It draws on Sikh stories and wisdom to push the conversation on race and justice in America. And it presents ten core practices of revolutionary love, backed by research.

I need your help –

Book tour cancelled. Media spinning out. It has never felt harder to break through the noise. I am leaning entirely on you – my community – to give the book a chance.

I wrote this book as an act of survival. After the 2016 election, I was a new mother and burned out civil rights activist. The future never felt darker. I asked: “But what if this is not the darkness of the tomb – but the darkness of the womb? What if this is our great transition? The midwife says to breathe and push!” I was then flooded with questions – HOW do we breathe? HOW do we push? How do we labor for justice when the labor feels endless?

I needed to answer these questions for myself. I pored through the stories of my life, and the wisdom of my faith and community, and social movements of the past. I saw patterns emerge. Love as a force for justice. I called it revolutionary love.

I believe the meaning of life is laboring with joy. I want us to last. I want you to last. May this book put breath in your body.

Please join me this week for conversations and events — see below! I am here to journey with you in the days and months to come. We are in this together.

Valarie

ANYWHERE BOOKS ARE SOLD:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Powell’s
BAM | Indiebound | Apple Books

A practical guide to changing the world, a synthesis of wisdom, a chronicle of personal and communal history – all joined together by Kaur’s dramatic story of awakening to love that enjoins us to see no stranger. 


I will be in conversation about See No Stranger with other thinkers, writers, artists and activists all this week – join the dialogue on Instagram Live!

  • Van Jones 
    (@vanjones68) 6/15 @ 4:30pm PST
  • Ari Afsar 
    (@ariannaafsar) 6/15 @ 8pm PST
  • Sally Kohn
    (@sallykohn) 6/16 @ 12:30pm PST
  • Jamil Smith
    (@jamilksmith) 6/16 @ 2pm PST
  • Rev. Jacqui Lewis
    (@valariekaur) 6/17 @ 10am PST
  • Linda Sarsour
    (@lsarsour) 6/17 @11:30am PST
  • Seane Corn
    (@seanecorn) 6/17 4pm PST
  • Tara Brach
    (@tarabrach) 6/18 @ 10:30am PST
  • Rainn Wilson 
    (@soulpancake) 6/18 @ 12pm PST
  • Debra Messing
    (@therealdebramessing) 6/18 @ 2pm PST
  • Geena Rocero
    (@geenarocero) 6/19 @ 11:30am PST

The Revolutionary Love Project envisions a world where love is a public ethic and shared practice in our lives and politics. We generate stories, tools, and thought leadership to equip people to practice the ethic of love in the fight for social justice.