Kari Grain - Critical Hope: How to Grapple with Complexity, Lead with Purpose, and Cultivate Transformative Social Change

In an age when we so often feel overwhelmed by the enormity of trauma in our communities and our world, Dr. Grains book couldnt be more relevant and applicable. It is a compendium on hope in a way youve never seen before, and mixes academia with real, raw, and honest storytelling. It cannot be missed.

Candace Salmon, lawyer and cofounder of Reflections on Rwanda

It is rare that one reads a book where the writer is so open and honest. One cannot help but admire the courage with which Kari Grain has dealt with the adversities she encountered in her life. On a larger scale, Grain shows an acute awareness of the challenging problems facing the world right now and the renewed strength and skills that will be essential to deal with these difficulties now and in the future. Emily Dickinson wrote that hope is that thing with feathers. In her book, Kari Grain makes hope fly.

Pinchas Gutter, Holocaust survivor and author of Memories in Focus

I wish I had written this book. I have lived with the concept of critical hope without ever having had a name for it. This book told me something that I needed to know. Everyone should read it.

Douglas Courtemanche, MD

This is a beautiful book with a powerful takeaway: the critical part of hope is seeded and nurtured by discomfort and humility. Grains deep connection to teaching helps us see how we can enter hopeful space with others. For me, the stories that Grain relays of friends, acquaintances, and coworkers navigating critical hope were icing on the cakeits Grains own experience as an educator and a seeker, guided by justice, that really catches us up and shows us the way.

Tristin K. Green, professor of law at the University of San Francisco and author of Discrimination Laundering

It is a beautiful experience to read something that is so emotional, critical, and academic. I wish there was more writing like this.

Emily Yee Clare, anti-racism educator and equity consultant

Critical Hope is an important contribution to not only the field of education, but also the political realm that encompasses the world as invisible architecture. Grains emphasis on deepening structural analysis, praxis, and somatics, including the important work of metabolizing grief, are part of a time-tested trinity to become more contextually relevant beings. Given the current context, this is the urgent and eternal work of our times.

Alnoor Ladha, cofounder of The Rules, council chair for Culture Hack Labs, and coauthor of Post-Capitalist Philanthropy

Copyright 2022 by Kari Grain. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
Huichin, unceded Ohlone land
aka Berkeley, California

Cover photo Anita Ponne/Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Mimi Bark
Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Critical Hope: How to Grapple with Complexity, Lead with Purpose, and Cultivate Transformative Social Change is sponsored and published by North Atlantic Books, an educational nonprofit based in the unceded Ohlone land Huichin (aka Berkeley, CA) that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are distributed to the US trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publishers Services. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Grain, Kari, 1983author.
Title: Critical hope : how to grapple with complexity, lead with purpose,
and cultivate transformative social change / Kari Grain.
Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, [2022] | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Summary: An introduction to the
seven principles for practicing critical hopeProvided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021043740 (print) | LCCN 2021043741 (ebook) | ISBN
9781623176372 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781623176389 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Hope. | Conduct of life. | Social justice. | Critical
theory. | LeadershipSocial aspects.
Classification: LCC BD216 .G73 2022 (print) | LCC BD216 (ebook) | DDC
152.4dc23/eng/20211207
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043740
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043741

This book includes recycled material and material from well-managed forests. North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We print on recycled paper whenever possible and partner with printers who strive to use environmentally responsible practices.

This book is dedicated to Besta (my maternal grandmother, who also goes by Edel Satermo) and the many resilient elders in our midst who gift us with the wisdom of the past while remaining open toand hopeful fora transformed future.

Writing a book, like any worthwhile creative project, is an endeavor in self-doubt, passion, and vulnerabilitythe amalgam of which was only fruitful because of the humans, animals, and natural landscapes that supported me through this process.

Most of my writing happened in a specific place, on land that has a rich history and a lifeblood all its own. It is a landscape that I feel deep reverence for, and it means a great deal to me to live and write at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, among West Coast rainforest and wildlife. This land is the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xmkym (Musqueam), Swxw7mesh (Squamish), and sllwta (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. I extend my gratitude to them and other local First Nations for their stewardship of this place. In the face of historical injustices and trauma brought on by colonization, they are still here, still resisting contemporary vestiges of colonialism, still fighting for their right to existand flourishing in spite of it all.

Thank you, of course, to my parents, John and Kirsti Grain. Through their own actions and lived ethics, they have taught me about the value of kindness, humor, generosity, public education, and hospitality. My dad, a loving man and former teachers union president, instilled in me two values that I hold particularly dear: First is his conviction that justice is worth fighting for. And second, but no less important, is his belief that in nature we can gain peace and restoration, whether by rowing on a quiet lake or walking among the pine trees. These two values have imbued my ambitions with purpose, and theyve gifted me with the clear heart that I need to fight the good fight. Speaking of nature, my mom is an exuberant force of it. All her life, she has underestimated her own brilliance, value, and impact on the world. In her three decades of nursing in the same elderly care home, she enlivened countless quiet rooms and generously doled out hugs to the oldest members of our society, who often had nobody left to embrace. If I am passionate about hope, it is because my mom has exemplified the best of humanity, lovingly holding the hand of so many elders as they departed this world for the next.

Thank you to my indomitable brother and best friend, John-Erik: he is proof of the happiness that is possible when you move through fear and tread through the mud and the muck toward a brighter vision of the future. Thank you for always being there for me. And to his partner, Elaine, thank you for asking hard questions and for embodying a depth and playfulness that make our lives lighter. You have gifted our family and community with a bundle of stardust named Jules, and he already emanates your spark of spirit.