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Rehearsals for Living
A revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists.
When much of the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, award-winning author of several books, including the recent novel Noopiming, began writing each other letters--a gesture sparked by friendship and solidarity, and by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. Their letters soon grew into a powerful exchange on the subject of where we go from here.
Rehearsals is a captivating book, part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers convening on what it means to get free as the world spins into some new orbit. In a genre-defying exchange, the authors collectively envision the possibilities for more liberatory futures during a historic year of Indigenous land defense, prison strikes, and global-Black-led rebellions against policing. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment in the first place, Maynard and Simpson create something new: a vital demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up new ways of ordering earthly life.
When much of the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, award-winning author of several books, including the recent novel Noopiming, began writing each other letters--a gesture sparked by friendship and solidarity, and by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. Their letters soon grew into a powerful exchange on the subject of where we go from here.
Rehearsals is a captivating book, part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers convening on what it means to get free as the world spins into some new orbit. In a genre-defying exchange, the authors collectively envision the possibilities for more liberatory futures during a historic year of Indigenous land defense, prison strikes, and global-Black-led rebellions against policing. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment in the first place, Maynard and Simpson create something new: a vital demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up new ways of ordering earthly life.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published June 14, 2022
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October 31, 2022Not rating this because at 10%+ the authors, who are not very good narrators tbh, we’re still discussing what this book was or was not, and how messy it is and how it came about. Coupled with the poor narration I just cannot be bothered, despite really liking previous books by both of them. Maybe I’d pick up the physical copy but I have a lot of those in the TBR already and I know that for a while it sure wasn’t anything of note to me, so it’s probably never going to happen.
February 18, 2023
"There are two different visions of freedom at play here. One is the freedom to evade, to deny one's responsibility to a collective social body; the other forwards a freedom that is relational, holds up freedom as collective safety." a dialogue between two brilliant thinkers nurturing a relationship and a land-based politics that shows us how our movements for Black liberation & Indigenous sovereignty are intertwined. easily one of my favorite books.
October 28, 2022
Life-changing. A gift. Will never stop thinking of this one.
November 23, 2022
This book was the November selection for the Rad Roopa Book Club in which I participate, but it was also one I just really wanted to read soonish (and I’ve purchased a copy as a birthday gift for a friend!). Robyn Maynard’s
Policing Black Lives
was an important book for me a few years ago. I haven’t read anything from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, but her words here proved just as significant. Rehearsals for Living is a moving and meditative journey through the minds and hearts of two powerful, political women. It gets you thinking—but it should hopefully do more than that; it should get you acting.
The book is a collection of letters the two authors wrote to each other over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The letters are long and intended to be turned into a book, yet they still feel very intimate. Maynard talks about her struggles with parenting during lockdown and raising a Black child in an anti-Black society. Simpson recalls how land defence actions, like the Oka Crisis at Kanehsatà:ke in 1990, shaped her as a young activist, and connects this with ongoing Indigenous stewardship, sovereignty, and protection of the land. This is not a history book, yet you will learn history from it. It is not a manifesto, yet it left me feeling energized and invigorated.
Canada is an unjust society. A lot of people have trouble acknowledging this fact, owing perhaps to propaganda we get fed in school or a reluctance to feel like we are more like our neighbour to the south than we care to admit. Nevertheless, it’s true. We have serious issues with anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, and structural social problems that prop up a carceral, capitalist state built on colonialism and resource extraction.
Now, if you’re looking for a soft introduction to these ideas, then Rehearsals for Living is not the place. This book assumes you are at least somewhat aware of the problems Maynard and Simpson discuss. That’s what I liked so much about it: I really want to move from ally to accomplice, move beyond “antiracism 101: don’t do a racism” lectures that tend to proliferate throughout EDI training. This book is a great step in that journey, both for how it challenges the reader’s assumptions and ideas and for how it demonstrates concrete action.
I read this the week after Treaties Recognition Week here in Ontario. The first full week of November has been designated for teaching and learning about the Treaties between Canada (or its predecessor colonial governments) and First Nations. I live on territory that’s part of the Robinson–Superior Treaty of 1850. Usually in my English course, I discuss Treaties in general and then show the NFB documentary Trick or Treaty? , by Alanis Obomsawin, which is about Treaty No. 9, to the north of Thunder Bay. Treaties are an immensely important part of understanding the historical, legal, and cultural relationships between settlers and First Nations. We are all Treaty people.
So land was on my mind as I read these letters. I had tried, as best I could as a white woman, to impress upon my students (some Indigenous, some not) how much colonization comes back to land. How different the worldviews of First Nations are from those of settler-colonial institutions when it comes to even the idea of “ownership” of land. Of course, Simpson expresses it so much more eloquently than I ever could! I read some passages from one of her letters out loud to my class.
Simpson and Maynard together help to demonstrate how so many seemingly separate injustices are connected and how they have their root in the land. Black and Indigenous activisms are connected because Black and Indigenous people are both overrepresented in Canada’s prison system. Incarceration is another way of controlling who has access to, who is restricted from, certain land. Whether it’s reserves dictated by the Indian Act and Department of Indian Affairs or sentences handed down by judges empowered by jurisdictions more interested in developing land than serving the people who live upon it, the state has always had intense mechanisms available to it to exercise this kind of control.
Rehearsals for Living is also inescapably about the pandemic and how it affected life, including activism. On one hand, there was some early release of prisoners to try to stop the spread of COVID-19 in prisons and jails. On the other hand, lockdown increased the isolation of vulnerable people, made group demonstrations and protests riskier and more difficult to coordinate, and increased risks for frontline workers, who tend to be racialized people. The ground shifted between us in the past two years, and Maynard and Simpson take note of this. Their letters capture their frustration with the moment, their exhaustion, but also their irrepressible hope. Because their people are still here. Indigenous people are still here, five hundred years in to colonization. Black people are still here. The centuries-long project of genocide, the attempt to erase people in favour of persons, of labour, has not been successful.
However, as these two authors note with sincerity and admonishment, we cannot think our way out of these problems. We cannot write our way out of these problems. Simpson and Maynard both share details of their actions, how they organize, participate in, support, or otherwise enable demonstrations, protests, sit-ins, mutual aid. The state is not going to save us; we have to save ourselves. This is something I think about a lot lately, both as a white woman with a lot of privilege in our society, as well as a trans woman who experiences structural and individual discrimination. It all comes back to community-building, to finding your people, and rallying around the cause.
From prison and police abolition to mental health to climate change, Rehearsals for Living tackles the important issues of our day with grace and optimism and unapologetic honesty. Part of me worries that white women like myself will elevate this book as another kind of feather to put into our reading cap—oh, did you read Rehearsals for Living? Touching, isn’t it? Yes, I learned a lot from it—well, onto the shelf it goes! Look at how educated I am! But as tired as I can tell Maynard and Simpson are from dealing with white people, even so-called allies, I can also see a lot of hope in their writing. All of us who live here can play a role. But we need to step out onto that stage, need to take responsibility, need to start living the relationship between ourselves and the land and other people on it. At least, that’s what I took away from this.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
The book is a collection of letters the two authors wrote to each other over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The letters are long and intended to be turned into a book, yet they still feel very intimate. Maynard talks about her struggles with parenting during lockdown and raising a Black child in an anti-Black society. Simpson recalls how land defence actions, like the Oka Crisis at Kanehsatà:ke in 1990, shaped her as a young activist, and connects this with ongoing Indigenous stewardship, sovereignty, and protection of the land. This is not a history book, yet you will learn history from it. It is not a manifesto, yet it left me feeling energized and invigorated.
Canada is an unjust society. A lot of people have trouble acknowledging this fact, owing perhaps to propaganda we get fed in school or a reluctance to feel like we are more like our neighbour to the south than we care to admit. Nevertheless, it’s true. We have serious issues with anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, and structural social problems that prop up a carceral, capitalist state built on colonialism and resource extraction.
Now, if you’re looking for a soft introduction to these ideas, then Rehearsals for Living is not the place. This book assumes you are at least somewhat aware of the problems Maynard and Simpson discuss. That’s what I liked so much about it: I really want to move from ally to accomplice, move beyond “antiracism 101: don’t do a racism” lectures that tend to proliferate throughout EDI training. This book is a great step in that journey, both for how it challenges the reader’s assumptions and ideas and for how it demonstrates concrete action.
I read this the week after Treaties Recognition Week here in Ontario. The first full week of November has been designated for teaching and learning about the Treaties between Canada (or its predecessor colonial governments) and First Nations. I live on territory that’s part of the Robinson–Superior Treaty of 1850. Usually in my English course, I discuss Treaties in general and then show the NFB documentary Trick or Treaty? , by Alanis Obomsawin, which is about Treaty No. 9, to the north of Thunder Bay. Treaties are an immensely important part of understanding the historical, legal, and cultural relationships between settlers and First Nations. We are all Treaty people.
So land was on my mind as I read these letters. I had tried, as best I could as a white woman, to impress upon my students (some Indigenous, some not) how much colonization comes back to land. How different the worldviews of First Nations are from those of settler-colonial institutions when it comes to even the idea of “ownership” of land. Of course, Simpson expresses it so much more eloquently than I ever could! I read some passages from one of her letters out loud to my class.
Simpson and Maynard together help to demonstrate how so many seemingly separate injustices are connected and how they have their root in the land. Black and Indigenous activisms are connected because Black and Indigenous people are both overrepresented in Canada’s prison system. Incarceration is another way of controlling who has access to, who is restricted from, certain land. Whether it’s reserves dictated by the Indian Act and Department of Indian Affairs or sentences handed down by judges empowered by jurisdictions more interested in developing land than serving the people who live upon it, the state has always had intense mechanisms available to it to exercise this kind of control.
Rehearsals for Living is also inescapably about the pandemic and how it affected life, including activism. On one hand, there was some early release of prisoners to try to stop the spread of COVID-19 in prisons and jails. On the other hand, lockdown increased the isolation of vulnerable people, made group demonstrations and protests riskier and more difficult to coordinate, and increased risks for frontline workers, who tend to be racialized people. The ground shifted between us in the past two years, and Maynard and Simpson take note of this. Their letters capture their frustration with the moment, their exhaustion, but also their irrepressible hope. Because their people are still here. Indigenous people are still here, five hundred years in to colonization. Black people are still here. The centuries-long project of genocide, the attempt to erase people in favour of persons, of labour, has not been successful.
However, as these two authors note with sincerity and admonishment, we cannot think our way out of these problems. We cannot write our way out of these problems. Simpson and Maynard both share details of their actions, how they organize, participate in, support, or otherwise enable demonstrations, protests, sit-ins, mutual aid. The state is not going to save us; we have to save ourselves. This is something I think about a lot lately, both as a white woman with a lot of privilege in our society, as well as a trans woman who experiences structural and individual discrimination. It all comes back to community-building, to finding your people, and rallying around the cause.
From prison and police abolition to mental health to climate change, Rehearsals for Living tackles the important issues of our day with grace and optimism and unapologetic honesty. Part of me worries that white women like myself will elevate this book as another kind of feather to put into our reading cap—oh, did you read Rehearsals for Living? Touching, isn’t it? Yes, I learned a lot from it—well, onto the shelf it goes! Look at how educated I am! But as tired as I can tell Maynard and Simpson are from dealing with white people, even so-called allies, I can also see a lot of hope in their writing. All of us who live here can play a role. But we need to step out onto that stage, need to take responsibility, need to start living the relationship between ourselves and the land and other people on it. At least, that’s what I took away from this.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
December 22, 2022
wheeeww! what an epistle! what water!
July 26, 2022
What a gift of a book.
August 7, 2022
Absolutely the best book I’ve ever read and sure to be the most formative as I sit with it. GO READ IT!!!!
January 17, 2023
This book is compiled from a letter correspondence between Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson during the first year (or so) of the COVID-19 pandemic. The letters centre 3 crises: COVID, climate catastrophe and colonialism/racism and highlights the intersections in the causes, outcomes and commonalities across populations most affected/targeted. The authors are two of the most important political thinkers in "Canada" right now and it was invaluable to witness their solidarity building across their activisms. The book made me feel less alone in my despair and even gave me a little hope?
This book reminded me that even if nonfic like this can be a hard read and make me feel angry, sad etc, it can also give me hope and new ways of thinking and make me feel less alone ❤ I've set a goal to read 4 nonfic books in 2023 because reading this book was so good for me.
This book reminded me that even if nonfic like this can be a hard read and make me feel angry, sad etc, it can also give me hope and new ways of thinking and make me feel less alone ❤ I've set a goal to read 4 nonfic books in 2023 because reading this book was so good for me.
August 18, 2022
I don't really like doing reviews anymore, but I want people to read this book too badly to add it to my list of voiceless ratings.
When I read Emergent Strategy earlier this year, I remember sitting with the wisdom of Octavia Butler referenced by Adrienne Marie Brown throughout. I remember repeating to myself: "Everything you touch, you change. Everything you change changes you. The only everlasting truth is change. God is change." And although I knew that envisioning change was essential to radical abolitionist work, it was hard to find comfort in change as a constant. It might be the Virgo (or mental illness) in me, but I didn't really know how to find peace in continuous world-changing, world-ending, and world beginnings.
In Rehearsals For Living, Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson showed me how to find reassurance in world-changing. They showed me how world-changing is happening all around us, all the time. It's an incredible book, probably the best I've read all year, and I'd recommend anyone interested reads it. (I'll lend you my copy if that's what it takes.)
Through their regular correspondence, Simpson and Maynard offered me, for the first time, a real living example of how abolition is "life in rehearsal," a living practice enacted in small parts all the time. It is emergent strategy for those of us not there yet, not connected to the emergence of radical world-making and world-endings (of capitalist and colonial worlds), not so much a guidebook, but a collection of memories, stories, and experiences to envision abolition through. Not only that, but this book illustrates solidarity outside of theory, reminding me that it is human, beautiful, and genuine. (It can exist, I can see it!)
Anyways, this is long enough. Just know that I am very grateful for the humility, honesty, and care Maynard and Simpson put into their book, and I'm sure I'll reach for it regularly.
When I read Emergent Strategy earlier this year, I remember sitting with the wisdom of Octavia Butler referenced by Adrienne Marie Brown throughout. I remember repeating to myself: "Everything you touch, you change. Everything you change changes you. The only everlasting truth is change. God is change." And although I knew that envisioning change was essential to radical abolitionist work, it was hard to find comfort in change as a constant. It might be the Virgo (or mental illness) in me, but I didn't really know how to find peace in continuous world-changing, world-ending, and world beginnings.
In Rehearsals For Living, Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson showed me how to find reassurance in world-changing. They showed me how world-changing is happening all around us, all the time. It's an incredible book, probably the best I've read all year, and I'd recommend anyone interested reads it. (I'll lend you my copy if that's what it takes.)
Through their regular correspondence, Simpson and Maynard offered me, for the first time, a real living example of how abolition is "life in rehearsal," a living practice enacted in small parts all the time. It is emergent strategy for those of us not there yet, not connected to the emergence of radical world-making and world-endings (of capitalist and colonial worlds), not so much a guidebook, but a collection of memories, stories, and experiences to envision abolition through. Not only that, but this book illustrates solidarity outside of theory, reminding me that it is human, beautiful, and genuine. (It can exist, I can see it!)
Anyways, this is long enough. Just know that I am very grateful for the humility, honesty, and care Maynard and Simpson put into their book, and I'm sure I'll reach for it regularly.
July 19, 2023
I’m still processing this one. Maybe I always will be. The idea that won’t stop echoing is about how unsustainable our current world is here, in North America, or anywhere that capitalism is. It’s not that I didn’t know that, but this conversation teased out for the first time (for me) a fuzzy, confusing, confounding image of what decolonization might actually be. It’s like a dream, and like Arundhati Roy, I can ALMOST hear it breathing.
January 9, 2023
This book is such a beautiful exchange between two brilliant activist-scholars. The exchange demonstrates humility, care, and intimacy it is an honor to participate, to catch a glimpse of some visions and practices of worldmaking, through reading this book, and for that I am grateful.
Maynard and Simpson are able to weave the crises and rebellions of the year when this exchange took place into a larger decolonial and abolitionist imagination for the world. They offer ultimately a call to action. The action of stepping through the portal and remaking the world differently. These exchanges embody all the grief, rage and at times hope which that year (2020), but other years, most years as well, manifested.
Maynard and Simpson are able to weave the crises and rebellions of the year when this exchange took place into a larger decolonial and abolitionist imagination for the world. They offer ultimately a call to action. The action of stepping through the portal and remaking the world differently. These exchanges embody all the grief, rage and at times hope which that year (2020), but other years, most years as well, manifested.
October 26, 2024
A central point of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s marvellous
As We Have Always Done
is the notion of struggle based on what she calls ‘constellations of coresistance’. It’s a rich and powerful notion, one that gets beyond the crude simplicities of allyship, with its implications of generously given support but very little recognition of the multiplicities of struggle and aspects of struggles or the differences between allies. The notion of co-resistance invokes a very difference sense of the reason for being in the struggle, where ‘allies’ may have overlapping but also autonomous interests, while the idea of constellation gives them a sense of unity. It’s a rich metaphor, an enticing vision of comradeship, and a challenging practice.
This equally impressive six-part exploration grapples with what those constellations might look like and how the terms of co-resistance might be developed. In it, Simpson – a leading voice in Turtle Island’s Indigenous struggles – and Robyn Maynard – a powerful activist-analyst voice in Black struggles in the lands we call Canada – lay out a discussion that mediates, circles, muses on, and gives form to such a constellation. While it is clear that there is a rich friendship woven into the text, and a close comradeliness, the circumstances of its composition and its form also impose a sense of distance. Written during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and Canada’s approach to public health the centred on the maintenance of distance, Maynard and Simpson resort to letter writing.
This epistolary form gives the book both a slightly archaic feel as well as sense of intimacy – we are reading their letters, texts that include asides, personal reminiscences, family stories and moments, and self-reflection as well as, in the midst of ‘lockdowns’ and amid comments on the struggle, references to well-being, mental health, community and individual isolation and frustration, and more. There is, in this, an ambiguous sense of reading over their shoulders, while also recognising that this sense of the personal and the intimacy that flows from it is likely to be part of those constellations.
Along the way they explore engagements and relationships with the land, the commonalities and difference of racialized violence in their past and present worlds, the experience and powerfulness of spending time in the company of others-in-struggle and the importance of being in their ways of being, and each other’s different modes of engagement with the other’s communities’ key moments of struggle and resistance. In places there are frank admissions of uncertainty about how to engage alongside rich reflections on space and place making in those moments and the structures and networks that they spawn.
Crucially, this is not an attempt to be prescriptive but to openly and honestly explore options, to tell stories about ways of being, to consider ways to work around and beyond the Nation/State as a site of solution, and to pick away at the politics and relations of care and generosity in those constellations that seem so appealing. Importantly, it is not just a generosity and care for each other that Simpson and Maynard evoke, but a transformative politics of root and branch (that is, radical) change that considers those constellations of coresistance as shaped as much by care as the conflict that struggle necessarily evokes.
Framed by contributions from Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Robin D G Kelly, and mediating the tension between hope and discipline that shapes nearly every site of political struggle, this dialogue is a beautiful and beguiling exploration of the politics of politics, of survivance in the quest for survival, and of the fundamentals of comradeship. That makes it essential reading for these times.
This equally impressive six-part exploration grapples with what those constellations might look like and how the terms of co-resistance might be developed. In it, Simpson – a leading voice in Turtle Island’s Indigenous struggles – and Robyn Maynard – a powerful activist-analyst voice in Black struggles in the lands we call Canada – lay out a discussion that mediates, circles, muses on, and gives form to such a constellation. While it is clear that there is a rich friendship woven into the text, and a close comradeliness, the circumstances of its composition and its form also impose a sense of distance. Written during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and Canada’s approach to public health the centred on the maintenance of distance, Maynard and Simpson resort to letter writing.
This epistolary form gives the book both a slightly archaic feel as well as sense of intimacy – we are reading their letters, texts that include asides, personal reminiscences, family stories and moments, and self-reflection as well as, in the midst of ‘lockdowns’ and amid comments on the struggle, references to well-being, mental health, community and individual isolation and frustration, and more. There is, in this, an ambiguous sense of reading over their shoulders, while also recognising that this sense of the personal and the intimacy that flows from it is likely to be part of those constellations.
Along the way they explore engagements and relationships with the land, the commonalities and difference of racialized violence in their past and present worlds, the experience and powerfulness of spending time in the company of others-in-struggle and the importance of being in their ways of being, and each other’s different modes of engagement with the other’s communities’ key moments of struggle and resistance. In places there are frank admissions of uncertainty about how to engage alongside rich reflections on space and place making in those moments and the structures and networks that they spawn.
Crucially, this is not an attempt to be prescriptive but to openly and honestly explore options, to tell stories about ways of being, to consider ways to work around and beyond the Nation/State as a site of solution, and to pick away at the politics and relations of care and generosity in those constellations that seem so appealing. Importantly, it is not just a generosity and care for each other that Simpson and Maynard evoke, but a transformative politics of root and branch (that is, radical) change that considers those constellations of coresistance as shaped as much by care as the conflict that struggle necessarily evokes.
Framed by contributions from Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Robin D G Kelly, and mediating the tension between hope and discipline that shapes nearly every site of political struggle, this dialogue is a beautiful and beguiling exploration of the politics of politics, of survivance in the quest for survival, and of the fundamentals of comradeship. That makes it essential reading for these times.
December 15, 2023
This book was everything I needed to read at this exact moment. Reading the exchanges between Maynard and Simpson was such a gift. Would 100% recommend.
December 9, 2022
A series of letters written between a black activist and an indigenous activist, who are unable to meet in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I've read a lot of books about activist issues. I think they're important, and teach me to question myself and our collective culture, and fight for change. These books are not easy, fun, or enjoyable to read. They're hard. Really hard. They present uncomfortable truths, force you to challenge ingrained assumptions, and present you with startling stories and statistics. This book falls in that category.
Unfortunately, I found this book even more challenging than most books in this category. You would think it would be more relatable and engaging, since it's a series of letters, but I found the opposite to be true. It was very dry, and reads like a literature review, using academic words that nobody I know uses in real life (for example - quotidien, pedagogical, obfuscation, historiography, etc.).
The pace is slow, and I had to take out the book from the library twice to make it through the whole thing. It's a bit like reading a calculus text book. Not enjoyable, lots of struggles, important lessons, you want to put it down but then you'll fail the class.
In summary, I found this book totally exhausting to read. Maybe that's the point?
I've read a lot of books about activist issues. I think they're important, and teach me to question myself and our collective culture, and fight for change. These books are not easy, fun, or enjoyable to read. They're hard. Really hard. They present uncomfortable truths, force you to challenge ingrained assumptions, and present you with startling stories and statistics. This book falls in that category.
Unfortunately, I found this book even more challenging than most books in this category. You would think it would be more relatable and engaging, since it's a series of letters, but I found the opposite to be true. It was very dry, and reads like a literature review, using academic words that nobody I know uses in real life (for example - quotidien, pedagogical, obfuscation, historiography, etc.).
The pace is slow, and I had to take out the book from the library twice to make it through the whole thing. It's a bit like reading a calculus text book. Not enjoyable, lots of struggles, important lessons, you want to put it down but then you'll fail the class.
In summary, I found this book totally exhausting to read. Maybe that's the point?
September 13, 2022
Absolutely incredible. Maynard and Betasamosake Simpson's epistolary exchange began at the heart of the pandemic, when they stakes were so obvious to everyone else. And yet, they reach back to the centuries of destruction of land and of people to tell us where this comes from, that it is not new. They rightly note that this is not an anthropocene that is uniquely destructive but instead a racial capitalism that has sought to destroy.
February 7, 2023
Read this book for one of my classes, and I absolutely loved it. The letters between Robin and Leanne are so personal and yet speak to broader issues, exploring themes of anti-capitalism, racism, abolition, etc. Truly a phenomenal work, and probably one I’ll read again
August 22, 2022
Required reading
Read
January 26, 2023Rehearsals for Living is an epistolary novel in which Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson exchange letters (not emails) to one another during the Covid-19 pandemic. The topical matter of the letters ranges from what they're doing to support movements which aim to dismantle patriarchal, colonial settler systems in Canada that continue to endanger and kill black and Indigenous peoples to gardening.
I've read Policing Black Lives by Maynard and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Betasamosake Simpson and both are fantastic as they offer insight to the hostile and racist realities of white Canadian culture.
I admit that a now dated Covid statement that Maynard makes initially put me off. I think that this inclusion has been the case in a lot of nonfiction that I've been reading recently and wish that writers would hold off on making sweeping generalizations and refrain from including outdated information until we better understand the situation. Especially since Canada and the US refuse to even acknowledge new research published in Europe and Asia. But I digress. I also recognize that this is a "me" issue. Back to the book!
Interestingly, the writers use the pandemic to frame their correspondence and focus instead on their reactions to how the pandemic has affected their work and how, especially in Canada, the opioid crisis has killed so many more Canadians due to lockdowns and the inability to access vital care and support. They both also highlight that, unsurprisingly, Covid, lockdowns, etc. hurt black and indigenous populations more than others. Although this wasn't new news to me, I was so thankful that the writers were pointing this out. My only criticism is that I know someone out there reading this will have wanted the stats to back up the writers' points, so I hope that there are footnotes in the physical copy of the book.
I enjoyed listening to the dialogue between Maynard and Betasamosake Simpson. I learned new things about the histories of both black and Indigenous groups and wished I could have joined the conversation! Listening to this on audio was a great idea (Maynard narrates), and it reminded me how much I want to reread both Policing Black Lives by Maynard and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Betasamosake Simpson!
If you're a fan of nonfiction, epistolary novels, Canadian sociopolitical and cultural issues, or like either or both of the authors, then I highly recommend that you pick up this text. I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy Rehearsals for Living (we all know that I can't stand memoirs, personal essays, and autobiographies), but I'm glad that I read it because I definitely did!
[Audiobook, borrowed from library]
I've read Policing Black Lives by Maynard and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Betasamosake Simpson and both are fantastic as they offer insight to the hostile and racist realities of white Canadian culture.
I admit that a now dated Covid statement that Maynard makes initially put me off. I think that this inclusion has been the case in a lot of nonfiction that I've been reading recently and wish that writers would hold off on making sweeping generalizations and refrain from including outdated information until we better understand the situation. Especially since Canada and the US refuse to even acknowledge new research published in Europe and Asia. But I digress. I also recognize that this is a "me" issue. Back to the book!
Interestingly, the writers use the pandemic to frame their correspondence and focus instead on their reactions to how the pandemic has affected their work and how, especially in Canada, the opioid crisis has killed so many more Canadians due to lockdowns and the inability to access vital care and support. They both also highlight that, unsurprisingly, Covid, lockdowns, etc. hurt black and indigenous populations more than others. Although this wasn't new news to me, I was so thankful that the writers were pointing this out. My only criticism is that I know someone out there reading this will have wanted the stats to back up the writers' points, so I hope that there are footnotes in the physical copy of the book.
I enjoyed listening to the dialogue between Maynard and Betasamosake Simpson. I learned new things about the histories of both black and Indigenous groups and wished I could have joined the conversation! Listening to this on audio was a great idea (Maynard narrates), and it reminded me how much I want to reread both Policing Black Lives by Maynard and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Betasamosake Simpson!
If you're a fan of nonfiction, epistolary novels, Canadian sociopolitical and cultural issues, or like either or both of the authors, then I highly recommend that you pick up this text. I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy Rehearsals for Living (we all know that I can't stand memoirs, personal essays, and autobiographies), but I'm glad that I read it because I definitely did!
[Audiobook, borrowed from library]
January 6, 2023
"Two of the most brilliant minds of our time, and they write letters to each other" is a criminally underrated format for a book, imo. Fortunately this one exists. During the lockdown, Maynard and Simpson begin a dialogue about Black and Indigenous struggles for justice, abolition, the climate crisis, police brutality, and decolonization. It's a luminous, righteously angry, loving work tackling the big question: "How do we live?"
I may need to buy myself a copy—there are just too many pieces of wisdom in this that I can see myself needing to revisit. It's not an easy or comfortable read, and I had to push down the reflexive "but but but" that I think every settler-Canadian experiences, but that's the point, isn't it? It shouldn't be comfortable or easy. It is a clarion call that the colonial project can not be tweaked or salvage but that a new world needs to be built.
I may need to buy myself a copy—there are just too many pieces of wisdom in this that I can see myself needing to revisit. It's not an easy or comfortable read, and I had to push down the reflexive "but but but" that I think every settler-Canadian experiences, but that's the point, isn't it? It shouldn't be comfortable or easy. It is a clarion call that the colonial project can not be tweaked or salvage but that a new world needs to be built.
March 18, 2023
★★★★☆ (4)
important for the everyday citizen for a deeper than average exploration of Black and Indigenous struggles on Turtle Island and the need for collective liberation, especially since the onset of COVID. on a personal level, however, their dialogue didn't add much to my own pool of knowledge gathered from GRSJ classes these past two years—the essays I've read from Maynard's and Simpson's individual collections have had far more impact on my learning.
also, audiobook-wise, there's power in hearing the voices of these phenomenal activists read aloud their own writing, but because there are constraints (as opposed to them giving a speech at an event) that audiobook narrators know how to navigate, it really made me appreciate how much of a difference one's skill in their profession can provide.
nevertheless, an important read, and just a rehearsal as indicative of the title; I would encourage you to progress onto the authors' other books for further insight into potentials for Black and Indigenous futurity.
important for the everyday citizen for a deeper than average exploration of Black and Indigenous struggles on Turtle Island and the need for collective liberation, especially since the onset of COVID. on a personal level, however, their dialogue didn't add much to my own pool of knowledge gathered from GRSJ classes these past two years—the essays I've read from Maynard's and Simpson's individual collections have had far more impact on my learning.
also, audiobook-wise, there's power in hearing the voices of these phenomenal activists read aloud their own writing, but because there are constraints (as opposed to them giving a speech at an event) that audiobook narrators know how to navigate, it really made me appreciate how much of a difference one's skill in their profession can provide.
nevertheless, an important read, and just a rehearsal as indicative of the title; I would encourage you to progress onto the authors' other books for further insight into potentials for Black and Indigenous futurity.
November 20, 2022
4.25+ stars
This book is exactly what the description says: a cohesive, powerful exchange of letters and ideas between two influential and significant literary and cultural figures. I’ll probably need to revisit some sections in more depth in the future, but it will definitely be a text I recommend for students in Indigenous Studies courses as well as any who are interested in social justice issues and social reform. I’m glad this book exists and that I was able to read a copy.
An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This book is exactly what the description says: a cohesive, powerful exchange of letters and ideas between two influential and significant literary and cultural figures. I’ll probably need to revisit some sections in more depth in the future, but it will definitely be a text I recommend for students in Indigenous Studies courses as well as any who are interested in social justice issues and social reform. I’m glad this book exists and that I was able to read a copy.
An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
August 24, 2022
This book gives me hope.
November 11, 2024
On racial violence, racial capitalism & intersectionality
March 25, 2023
The power of this book could have been so much more but I found it was undermined by the structure. This is essentially 2 books of essays merged together through a thin structure of exchanging letters. These don't read like letters at all so I found the two different styles of writing to be jarring and it got in the way of the ideas being shared.
October 13, 2024
So incredibly powerful.
December 31, 2022
I'm sure one of the markers of "this is a good and necessary book" includes how many pages I've dog-eared to look at later. So this is clearly a winner.
A record of letters between Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, this has all the raw truth and energy that the moment warranted: living on the edge of a pandemic and the wider struggle against police violence in 2020, these writers and activists found an audience in each other to communicate the ideas and methods that will carry us forward through this moment, sharpening each others' tools in the process. For me, it was their unflinching willingness to call it like it is, point out the threads connecting various levels of oppression, and how they root back to the original sins of colonization and slavery: the decision that some places, some lives are disposable for the greater good. That is the mindset we continue to grapple with today.
Some people aren't ready or aren't able to see these threads; that's your own struggle to address. There's not a ton of hand-holding or explaining here for these audiences and frankly there shouldn't be. This is the powerful exchange between two gifted and driven communicators and I think it's an honor to be able to hear them at the height of their powers, and hopefully carry forward that flame in our own ways.
A record of letters between Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, this has all the raw truth and energy that the moment warranted: living on the edge of a pandemic and the wider struggle against police violence in 2020, these writers and activists found an audience in each other to communicate the ideas and methods that will carry us forward through this moment, sharpening each others' tools in the process. For me, it was their unflinching willingness to call it like it is, point out the threads connecting various levels of oppression, and how they root back to the original sins of colonization and slavery: the decision that some places, some lives are disposable for the greater good. That is the mindset we continue to grapple with today.
Some people aren't ready or aren't able to see these threads; that's your own struggle to address. There's not a ton of hand-holding or explaining here for these audiences and frankly there shouldn't be. This is the powerful exchange between two gifted and driven communicators and I think it's an honor to be able to hear them at the height of their powers, and hopefully carry forward that flame in our own ways.
October 2, 2022
Oh, I wish I liked this more. The letters work as a collage of important issues that have cropped up over the past couple years, but it's hard to find any significant interventions... The two writers do know how to weave beautiful sentences, but the work rarely elevates beyond the level of generating an emotional response (i.e., reminding people to To The Work, to Keep It Going). Part Two, on "Making Freedom in Forgotten Places," was the clear highlight, especially on Simpson's end with her various ruminations on Black diasporic attempts to generate homespace while removed from their native lands alongside Indigenous attempts to maintain bonds to their own continuously truncated homespaces. I also appreciated her nod to the Native Alliance for Red Power's (NARP) visit to the Black Panther Party Seattle chapter in 1968 to discuss solidarity (96). Maynard does some solid historical analysis herself for Part Four on "One Hundred Forms of Homespace" where she discusses African revolutionary approaches to the nation-state as well as the history of policing as informed by anti-Indian policies. Finally, if one is going to discuss intellectual contributions, Simpson's naming of "anti-accumulation" to describe "a politic of sharing" as a "continual divestment of individuality and a perpetual deepening of the communal or the wider network of life" (133). Perhaps these letters are doing a little bit of that anti-accumulation work, which is the closest thing to a unique theory suggested across the text. As for the rest of the book, most of the topics are explored to more rewarding results by other scholars, many of whom get cited here. It's not dishonest, just frustratingly light on extensions of thought. Well, it's just a rehearsal. I'll still look forward to Simpson's next book.
August 23, 2022
A really thoughtful and well constructed work. The parts I liked best were those when the protagonists were clearly talking to each other: at times they were articulating the connections between their causes; at others, just sharing stories about their kids. This is also a valuable historical document. There is a joke that when historians study 2020, they will have to organize into subspecialties because so many important events took place. One really gets a sense of the development of these many stories by tracking the letter-writers' reactions. Reading this I felt a bittersweet nostalgia for the days when we believed that the pandemic would trigger some kind of spiritual and social reawakening, because lately it seems that that is in fact not going to happen.
August 11, 2024
An intimate and fiercely intelligent book written with so much compassion and love between the two authors. Being witness to the thinking of these two brilliant women is a gift. In sharing and growing and navigating their solidarities and differences through their friendship itself, they show the powerful worlds we can create by deeply thinking and working together. I will come back to this book again and again.
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