In celebration of Pride and Juneteenth last month, we asked our team for their reading recommendations.
Our second recommender Listener Poet Jenny Hegland offers heartfelt reviews and provides links for both of these books.
July 2021 photo & reviews by
Listener Poet Jenny Hegland
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
by adrienne maree brown
Humanities and social science
This short handbook is for people who want to radically change the world. It’s grounded in the wisdom of nature--particularly biomimicry, permaculture, and thriving ecosystems.
adrienne maree brown is an inspirational force (I highly recommend following her on Instagram or listening to any of her three podcasts) who identifies as an auntie, sister, daughter, woe, writer, facilitator, coach, pleasure activist, sci-fi scholar, doula, healer, tarot reader, witch, cheerleader, singer, philosopher, and queer Black multiracial lover of life. Throughout this book she incorporates poetry, as well as the stories of people she admires and has learned from (much of her work is inspired by science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler).
I love this book because it’s a quick read, challenges the status quo, invites dreaming around liberation that comes from a deep place of love, and offers practical tools for facilitation and working with people (we’ve even adopted some of these tools at TGLP to experiment with consensus decision making).
Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations
by Richard Wagamese
Religion and spirituality
I pick up this beautiful book almost every day. It inspires both my writing, and the way I live my life. It’s a collection of short stories and meditations that are brilliantly packed with what feels to me like eternal wisdom, nestled in colorful imagery.
Richard Wagamese was an Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He discovered the lessons shared in this collection by observing and listening deeply to nature–a true gift and embodiment of eldership.
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