Christian Livermore

It was incredibly hard to put this book down once I started it. I dog-eared so many pages, many of them simply because it was beautiful writing and storytelling. (I love how she points out, just at the right moment, that she switches between present and past tense in her narrative because the past is always present.) Some passages I marked because I was affected by her bravery and honesty, and some because I related to something as someone who can’t escape the economic situation I was born into in the 70s, and still others out of a desire to get as good at articulating what needs to change in America in order for everyone to feel safe and healthy and worthy of love.

“How did we come to be this way? We had such high hopes for ourselves, such lofty principles to which we committed the nation. The answer is right there in the Constitution, in which we asserted that a slave only counted as three-fifths of a human being. That willingness to suspend our commitment to liberty when money was involved was a declaration of our true values.”

In the chapter that comes from, Christian proposes something I agree with strongly: we have to let America as we know it die. I woke up trying to come up with names for the two nations in my mind, settling on the Democratic Union of America and the Holy Republic of America. The author doesn’t attempt to propose her own solutions, though she reviews the ideas already out there that are worth examining. I see her intent as a desire to push the door open to serious dialogue. There is so much depth to this book, politically and emotionally. May it fall into the hands of readers who can actually visualize such a radically new future, and are committed to working toward it as a community.… (meer)