Rebellious Mourning

The Collective Work of Grief

Cindy Milstein

• Publisher: AK Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781849352857
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Radicalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"This intimate, moving, and timely collection of essays points the way to a world in which the burden of grief is shared, and pain is reconfigured into a powerful force for social change and collective healing." —Astra Taylor, author The People's Platform

"A primary message here is that from tears comes the resolve for the struggle ahead." —Ron Jacobs, author of Daydream Sunset

" Rebellious Mourning 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." —Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch

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 alleviate suffering and improve 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. With contributions from Claudia Rankine, Sarah Schulman, David Wojnarowicz, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, David Gilbert, and nineteen others.

Cindy Milstein is the author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations, co-author of Paths toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism, and editor of the anthology Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism.

Table of contents

• Praise
• Dedication
• Prologue
• Feeling is Not Weakness
• The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning
• Dust of the Desert
• Her Brother
• It Takes An Ocean Not to Break
• Your Grief is My Grave
• Fragments Toward a Whole
• Lungful of Mountain
• To the Lights That Never Went Out
• Rages of Fukushima and Grief in a No-Future Present
• Cracks In My Universe
• In Self-Defense, in Defense of Memory
• Altars for the Dead in a Land Without Cemetaries
• To Mourn and Strike
• Justic and Love for Alex Nieto
• The Gentrification of AIDS
• Grief and Organizing in the Face of Repression
• Postcards From America
• Nansi Cisneros, A Sister Whose Pain and Demand for Justice Knows No Borders
• What is Possible
• "They Could be my Grandchildren"
• Fighting to Bury Their Children
• Ghost Stories
• Seeds Beneath the Snow
• Friends of AK Press
• Copyright