Join Cindy Milstein (anthology editor and contributor) and Dan Berger (contributor) at Pipsqueak Gallery for the Seattle launch of “Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief” (AK Press, September 2017). This collection, as Silvia Federici, author of “Caliban and the Witch,” puts it, “uncovers the destruction of life that capitalist development leaves in its trail. But it is also witness to the power of grief as a catalyst to collective resistance.”

Through first-person and/or frontline stories, the anthology’s thirty-seven contributors illuminate, bittersweetly, that we can bear almost anything when it is worked through collectively. Grief is generally thought of as something personal and insular, but when we publicly share loss and pain, we lessen the power of the forces that debilitate us, while at the same time building the humane social practices that reduce suffering and accentuate quality of life for everyone. Addressing tragedies from Fukushima to Palestine, incarceration to eviction, AIDS crises to border crossings, and racism to rape, the intimate yet tenacious writing in this volume shows that mourning can pry open spaces of contestation and reconstruction, empathy and solidarity.

Cindy and Dan will share their thoughts on the themes that weave through the book, and then facilitate a conversation.

Copies of the anthology will be available for sale at the event.

This event is free, but donations are appreciated to help cover Cindy’s travel to the Pacific Northwest. Other book-related events include a workshop at the Victoria Anarchist Bookfair on Sunday, September 17; a talk/discussion at Spartacus Books in the Unceded Coast Salish Territory (so-called Vancouver) on Monday, September 18; and a talk/discussion in PDX on Friday, September 22, https://www.facebook.com/events/137585793512323/).

For more info on the book, see:
https://www.akpress.org/rebellious-mourning.html

For more info on Pipsqueak Gallery, see:
https://www.thestranger.com/locations/23442624/pipsqueak-gallery