politics

“Life After Cars” by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, Aaron Naparstek

February 21, 2026 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile

Despite the title, this book is mostly about life during cars, with all the attendant horrors. Pedestrian and motorist deaths, pollution, environmental destruction, freeways built on top of thriving Black neighborhoods. The lockdown during the early part of the Covid pandemic gave us a glimpse of what it might be like to reclaim the world from cars and drivers, but we seem to have returned (or been pushed) back to the status quo.

Recommended if you want a chilling look at the true costs of car culture. I was hoping for more about the positive alternatives. There is some space given to the activists speaking up about car culture, and to cities in Europe and Asia that have taken back some of their streets for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Hospicing Modernity” by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira

February 4, 2026 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
Recommended to me by: Amy Bennett

This book is a brilliantly written educational tool, including full transparency about the techniques it is using to bring the reader new ideas in the face of very sophisticated defenses. The first few chapters earnestly present the risks of reading the rest of the book, and offer practices to remain grounded and centered while reading stories that question basic assumptions about our reality.

Vanessa Machado de Oliviera uses stories from her own life as a mixed-race person in South America who now works in academia, in addition to deep political analysis to describe the twists and tricks of modernity, the way it consumes us and alters our thinking so that it seems inevitable and unquestionable. She uses metaphors and exercises to encourage new ideas to take root.

One of the exercises is to imagine oneself as a bus with varied passengers, and to pay attention to who is driving, who is giving suggestions to the driver, and who is in the back of the bus, not directly affecting the choice of direction, but still present. She asks, where is modernity on your bus, and what does it have to say.

I thought about that as I biked to an errand, and at first modernity seemed very distant. Then I realized it is standing by the driver and talking constantly about what I’ve done wrong and how I need to be productive and earn enough to deserve to live, etc. etc.

Modernity is tricky and slippery and we’ve all been steeped in it, so even when we think we have renounced and defeated it, we are engaging in battles and black & white thinking that are part of it. Thus we want to honor it both outside and inside ourselves as it goes through its death throes and makes way for something new that is hopefully more nourishing and healthy for us all.

I got this book from the library, but I think I need to buy a copy. It is a book to sit with and revisit and go back to. Highly recommended

Author’s website including videos of the author discussing her work.

Available at bookshop.org.

“How We Show Up” by Mia Birdsong

November 30, 2025 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community
Recommended to me by: Nora Samaran

This is a deeply hopeful book grounded in research and personal stories. The American Dream of individualism, resource extraction, and white supremacy creates separation and suffering. Mia Birdsong explores alternatives that people have created to value connection, cooperation, and community.

As a Black woman, Mia centers Black, queer women and other marginalized people such as people who have experienced homelessness. She appreciates the connections that people weave while surviving oppression, that can lead us all in a direction of ending oppression.

While the American Dream says that we should get our needs met in heterosexual nuclear families, this book celebrates all the different kinds of friendship that can also meet needs for intimacy, safety, and mutual support. Raising kids is easier and healthier for everyone with a larger circle of responsible and trusted adults. People who are ageing can support one another.

Whether in crisis, celebration, or everyday life, we can all weave more connections in our lives where we are seen and loved for who we are.

Highly recommended!

Author’s website. It turns out Mia Birdsong lives right here in Oakland!

Available at bookshop.org.

“What It Takes to Heal” by Prentis Hemphill

November 16, 2025 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: How transforming ourselves can change the world

I had to return this to the library before I finished the last few chapters, but it all rang true to me, with clear analysis of the effects of racism and trauma, and clear calls to action for the ways we can move forward and heal the damage. Making the world a better place requires both internal healing and external connections. The organizations working toward social justice struggle with healing the ways people interact with each other inside the organizations as well as taking action out in the world.

Prentis includes stories about their experiences with racism, as well as their experiences with organizing for a better world.

Highly recommended.

Author website: prentishemphill.com

Available at bookshop.org.

Kitchens of Hope by Linda S. Svitak and Christin Jaye Eaton with Lee Svitak Dean

November 16, 2025 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: How transforming ourselves can change the world
Recommended to me by: Seeing it on the library “Lucky Day” shelf

This book out of Minnesota is a celebration of immigrant success stories and food from around the world. I haven’t tried any of the recipes yet, but I loved the photos and stories of how people connected with each other and found new places to thrive.

Highly recommended – I’m giving copies for the holidays this year.

Photography by Tom Wallace

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Serviceberry” by Robin Wall Kimmerer

January 18, 2025 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
Recommended to me by: Reading Kimmerer’s other books

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an Indigenous scientist, writer, and teacher. She shares the gathered wisdom of her Potawatomi tribe, along with her knowledge of the ins and outs of academia as a botanist.

She compares the Indigenous gift economy, which is in harmony with the natural world, to capitalist economics that try to extract maximum value, wrecking the natural world. The book is small and brief, 100 pages, illustrated with pen and ink drawings.

The serviceberry bush has many names because it is important to many communities and cultures. The berries are eaten fresh, and dried to make pemmican for travel and winter months. Birds also feast on the berries. Their abundant berries lead to gratitude, which leads to reciprocity and paying it forward, which feeds the cycle of life. A specific instance of picking serviceberries described in vivid detail provides a rich scaffold for considering how we can learn from plants and live better.

How can we grow gift economies within and alongside the capitalist system? There are already little free libraries, tool libraries, neighborhood food banks, trash nothing and buy nothing online groups, and neighborhood organizations for mutual aid.

This book is a joyful celebration of all of those, along with a careful, encouraging exploration of a positive direction to replace the negative of capitalism. The more we can each support our local gift economies, the more joy and sustainability we bring into our lives.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.