From the Ashes

The politics of grief, in an era marked by loss, shows us how we can find our humanity once more. From one of our most vital and far-seeing social critics.

Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to acknowledge it. The losses range from the personal grief of a single COVID death to the planetary disaster wrought by climate change. We are in an age of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. What can we do? 

This is capitalism’s death phase. It has become clear that the cost of wealth creation for a few is enormous destruction for others. The marginalized and the vulnerable have been feeling the crisis for a long time, but it is increasingly coming for all of us. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning the futures that are being so brutally curtailed. 

At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a radical act. Through in-depth reporting intertwined with memoir, Sarah Jaffe shows how public memorialization has become more than a refusal or a protest: it is a path to imagining a better world. When we are able to mourn the lives, the homes, the worlds we have lost, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future. 

• “One of the hardest but most necessary things is to write our lives and the larger world together at the same time. In a book of wrenching honesty, Sarah Jaffe does just this, giving us a snapshot of what it means to think and feel politically in our present perilous moment.” 
  Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack-Up Capitalism
• “Undone by grief in the wake of her father’s death, Jaffe investigates how shared vulnerability from loss can challenge, fuel, and transform movements for social change. Her rich reporting from the frontlines underscores how essential it is for activists and organizers to reckon with what it means to mourn—and shows how courageously confronting loss can help us build the solidarity our world so urgently needs.” 
  Sara Marcus, author of Political Disappointment
• “ From the Ashes . . . delivers in the most satisfying way. A profound analysis of grief, state violence, migration, labor, climate catastrophe, and mutual aid, From the Ashes transformed my understanding of each. With jarring and revelatory precision, Jaffe renames our collective grief, recognizes its political origins, and introduces us to the  people who are turning grief into revolution.” 
  Chenjerai Kumanyika, Peabody Award–winning host of Uncivil and Seeing White