adrienne maree brown

This is a haunting book. You can feel the loneliness and despair in each word and chapter. Dune's mom is patient zero, the first to go down in a new syndrome - a new pandemic. Dune must learn to navigate the world without her mom but also without the help of most of her friends and family. She is left to sort her mother's life in the house and what her legacy is but she also needs to find who she is now that her mom is gone. It's a story about deep sadness and resilience and the will to show more survive when the fight to do so feels overwhelming and too much. Dune's thoughts, ideas and her need to learn everyone's story around her was deeply moving. This is a story that will make you think and definitely stick with you.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Edelweiss. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. show less

This book could have been so corny. It was still slightly corny, but in all the best ways. It's utopian distopia. It's losing everything and then discovering that everything you lost is still right here. It's about community and capitalism and love and relationships and war and gardening and magik and everything.
Ancestors is the final book in a trilogy. I spent a fair amount of time between reading each book, which would normally mess me up and make me either have to quit or start over. show more Instead, though I did forget some important things, I was right back in Maroon Detroit as soon as I opened to the first page. Even if I didn't remember everything event that happened, I remembered the essence of all the characters.
If you're considering reading this book, you probably already know what it's about because you've read the first two. The plot is the same; they're in the same place, it's mostly the same people, and they're doing a lot of the same things. But they're all evolving. They're showing us that another world is possible. That we have the power to take anything and make it whole. That if the government and police and military all go away, we'll be fine. Not just fine, we will have the opportunity to excel like we never dreamed possible.
I want to live in this fake world; I want to read a fourth book; I want to smoke a blunt with adrienne maree brown and do whatever she tells me to do show less

brown has been on the periphery of my reading life for a little while now. I keep seeing her books and writing recommended by folks I know, but I hadn't gotten around to reading her until Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Hers was one of my favorite stories there, so I set out to read more of her work soon.

This book certainly did not disappoint. The Grief itself reminds me of Octavia Cade's The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, but goes in a whole show more different direction with it. Cade's book is concerned mostly with the lost of species, habitat, and nature, while brown is concerned with people, justice, and community -- the Black community of Detroit specifically.

Both are about how to move forward when you've lost so much. This is about activism -- showing up for your community, filling in gaps, honoring and recording the losses. So devastating and so beautiful at the same time. show less

We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by Adrienne Maree Brown is a short, easy read about cancel culture. I started Brown's book with some hesitation even though it was recommended by a friend because I so often hear criticism about cancel culture from people who just don't want to be held accountable for their actions/words. We Will Not Cancel Us addresses this phenomenon while also gently asking if there is a better way to address conflict and harm in society and show more particularly in groups working toward transformative justice. Brown writes in an accessible manner that feels like an invitation to examine how we treat one another as we attempt to work together. When Brown asked "Can we be abolitionist with each other?", I stopped and read that one question multiple times. My gut reaction was doubt, but I kept reading anyway and ended up at a hopeful maybe. We Will Not Cancel Us speaks directly to the conflict and harm that we inflict on one another, both intentionally and unintentionally, in our society and asks us to consider the idea of calling one another in instead of calling one another out. show less