Dear Friends,
I have waited a long time to make this announcement. I am so excited to share with you my new book SAGE WARRIOR comes out on Sept 10th and is available for you to pre-order! I am deeply grateful for your support through the years and wanted you to be the first to know.
I wrote this book for you, for us. We are living through apocalyptic times. As I traveled the country, so many of you asked me: How do we resist despair when the crises keep coming? How do we practice revolutionary love when the world feels like it’s ending? I felt these fears inside of me, too; I needed to answer these questions for myself.
So I embarked on a journey, going deeper than I have ever gone before—I returned to the stories of my ancestors. How did they survive apocalyptic times? How did they find courage in a world on fire? My journey took me on a pilgrimage across Punjab, retrieving and reimagining the stories of our first Sikh ancestors who lived half a millennium ago in South Asia. In Sikh wisdom, I found medicine for all of us: the path of the sant sipahi, the sage warrior. And I began to write this book.
Now, two years later, Sage Warrior is ready— an imaginative retelling of Sikh ancestors and the urgent wisdom they offer us. I cannot wait to put the book into your hands—it’s a new doorway into revolutionary love. You are my friends, family, colleagues, and allies. You are showing up to your life every day, channeling grief and rage into language and action. I want you to last. I want us to last. This book is my offering to you—an invitation to respond to the world not from the wound but from a seat of wisdom, pleasure, rest, and joy.
Click here to pre-order the book.
My request: Please pre-order the book today. If you are able, get 3 copies—one for yourself and two to gift to loved ones. Your pre-orders will give this book the best chance to reach people when it comes out. Many don’t believe that the voices of women of color, Sikh women, and marginalized voices are important for everyone. Your pre-orders tell publishers and press that our voices matter, our stories deserve to be told, our wisdom is seen as relevant.
I invite you to join me for a Virtual Tea Date on Wednesday, July 10th at 2pm PT/5pm ET. I will be offering an exclusive reading of the book for our community and share with you news about our journey leading up to Sept 10th and beyond. Click here to sign up for the zoom link and/or get the recording.
This book is just one of several big offerings this year. Stay tuned for another announcement tomorrow and next week!
Yours,
Valarie
How do we find the wisdom to envision a new world
and the courage to fight for it?
How do we survive seemingly apocalyptic times?
In a world on fire, how do we embrace love and joy?
We are not the first to ask these questions—in fact, seeking the answers forged one of the world’s great wisdom traditions. In a time riven by caste, conquest, and cruelty, Sikhs blazed the path of the sant sipahi, the sage warrior. The sage radiates love and Oneness; the warrior activates that ethical power to fight for humanity. These energies empowered the first Sikhs to survive near-annihilation nearly half a millennium ago in South Asia. The sage warrior is the essential archetype for our time of turmoil—one we can all embody to cultivate our souls and transform the world.
Valarie Kaur combines the epic, immersive story of her Sikh ancestors—centering the stories of the women who worked to map the path of the sage warrior—with the chronicle of a personal journey: her pilgrimage with her young children across Punjab, India where the story unfolded, an occasionally comic adventure woven with sublime moments of connection and insight. Each chapter offers a sparkling lesson that emerges from the stories—from practicing pleasure to metabolizing grief to choosing courage.
SAGE WARRIOR shimmers with wisdom: Every story is accompanied by original artwork by Keerat Kaur, music by Sonny Singh, and meditations, illuminating new ways of seeing and being. This journey is for anyone—from any faith tradition or spiritual practice or none at all—who hungers for a better world and is ready to discover the depth of their own power. Welcome to a journey where mystical love meets revolutionary social change.
“Sage Warrior is far more than a book – it’s a sacred invitation. I learned about love and revolution, and their sameness. I learned about the world and my life, and their oneness. Valarie’s courageous exploration of ancestral wisdom combined with her insights are exactly what the world is craving right now. I’m not the same after reading it, and, for that, I am deeply grateful.” — Brené Brown, Ph.D., author of the #1 NYT Bestseller Atlas of the Heart
“Valarie Kaur has never been afraid of wrestling with the biggest questions facing humanity — and in this wise and vivid book, she faces unflinchingly our biggest question of all: how do we live within a changing and collapsing world? How do our minds and bodies and hearts endure an apocalypse? Drawing upon ancient wisdom while also looking deep within herself (and toward the infinite) Kaur pulls courage from the flames of reality, and calls us all toward sovereignty, sacredness, and love. This is the book we need, and Kaur is a sacred wayfinder.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller Eat, Pray, Love
“Valarie Kaur is a leading light of love and compassion at a time when the world needs it most. Her voice is essential.” —Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste
“Valarie Kaur is a profound voice in the current wildness, urging us onward out of the darkness, towards love and peace, goodness and thus, freedom.” —Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Bird by Bird and Help Thanks Wow
When prophets speak the village should listen, and when the village is in need, prophets shall arise. Valarie Kaur is our prophetic voice calling us to reimagine what faith, compassion, and joy must be for our civic village to thrive.” —Rev. Otis Moss III, national faith leader and author of Dancing in the Darkness
A wondrous pilgrimage to the Sikh world! This rich literary, visual, aural magnet pulls us: we travel with the author and her family to her sacred sites and meet historic figures — with their mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, nieces, and comrades who have been neglected in history. We actively participate in momentous Sikh events; we see, we hear, we smell, we taste, we feel. All along, the activist Valarie trains us to be sensuously alive, morally awake – the goal of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion himself. Through a stunning, imaginative interweaving of the past with the present, history with imagination, Punjab with California, we are led to the all-inclusive divine One within. This is a transformative text, a must for our dangerously divided and polarized times.” –Dr. Nikky-Guninder Kaur, Sikh scholar and author of The First Sikh: The Life and Legacy of Guru Nanak
