A Renaissance of Our Own

256 pages | paperback |

A deeply personal and illuminating approach to antiracism, revealing imagination's power to dismantle oppressive systems and build liberating ones from a highly lauded lecturer, public academic, writer, and activist.

In Beyond Love and Light, Rachel Cargle details the seminal event that put her on the national map—her viral 2017 Women’s March appearance that thrust her into the national conversation on feminism and allyship—and how she soon woke up to the fallacies of a movement she had believed in. Discovering and unpacking the white-washed lies she’d been fed about intersectional “solidarity,” Cargle’s awakening, although painful and seismic, gifted her the opportunity to see the world through a new lens.
 
Now, Cargle shares her journey, depicting a framework for allyship, and beyond, that she developed along the way. Using her tools of KEA (Knowledge, Empathy, Action), or as she calls it “from the head to the heart to the feet,” as well as her Higher Values, Cargle reimagined her approach to the personal, societal, and structural components of life that are often stifled. She provides the same tools and prompts that anyone can wield to identify the structures and mindsets that hold them back and to move forward.
 
For readers of How to Be An Antiracist, Hood Feminism, White Fragility, and I'm Still Here, Beyond Love and Light serves as a reminder of the power and possibility of reimagining, to be an engine for critical learning, radical empathizing, and intentional action, an example of the ways in which a life can manifest when higher values are centered, ones that authentically reflect the way you want to exist in the world—and the world you want to shape for yourself and your community.