Beautifully written, this story serves more as a guide through these trying times. So good that I had to buy extra copies to give as gifts. Take into account including her seminars and website as well. Having a road map for approaching people whose thoughts and attitudes differ greatly from your own with understanding and compassion is very motivational.

I started this as an ARC and finally read it through in one swoop when I got a print copy. This fascinating book is one for our times, because of its exploration of "revolutionary love" for others. It brought a whole new perspective to me on the hate crimes committed after 9/11 and the author's civil rights work done as a result. It also is enlightening about the Sikh religious tradition that says to "see no stranger" and how that affected the author's work for human rights. A very personal look at a very public life with lots to think about and discuss.

Finally! I've been in and out of this book for fifteen months. Why? I have no good answer, other than different books kept demanding my attention, and I often succumbed to that desperate calling and stepped away from See No Stranger, even as I recognized its' value and pleasure giving properties.

One might ask, if you're giving high marks, why did it take so long for you (meaning me) to finish. And I would reply in all sincerity, that don't be fooled by the long time between start and finish. That is in no way a reflection on this inspiring and strength-filled text. I never gave up on Valarie Kaur and her very inspirational story of turning tragedy into triumph.

She is a very impressive young lady with an abundance of strength and compassion and has used her life experience to create the concept of see no strangers. And that idea is based in revolutionary love. Every time I put the book down, I was pulled back towards the pages, because I was full of wonder about Valarie Kaur and her activism and struggle through personal trauma and loss. The one thing that comes to mind(just this moment had this thought) regarding the time span, is there is a bit of redundancy.

She seems to tell the story of the violence in the aftermath of 9/11 and how it personally affected her and her extended family, multiple times. And perhaps that was the drag for me. But, she has become an amazing activist full of ideas and strength that is beyond her years, and when she talks about revolutionary love, you want to stand up and pay attention.

This book is a great mix of memoir, activism 101, and philosophy with a dash of Sikh religion and history. If you read this, and I think you should, you will come away inspired and if you can find a way to gaze upon a face that historically you have viewed as the opponent and see no stranger there, you’ll have this book to thank.

“If you choose to see no stranger, then you must love people, even when they do not love you. You must wonder about them even when they refuse to wonder about you. You must even protect them when they are in harm’s way.” This is the truth she attempts to live daily, imagine if we all made that effort.

A Bible, a tome, and guidebook for how to navigate the competing feelings in today's social and political climate. I have found myself referring back to it over when I need to be reminded to "see no stranger." Thank you Valarie for this. I am forever grateful.

ARC from publisher via NetGalley but the opinions are my own.

A fantastic read an important bookValarie Kaur lives an amazing life and shares so many important lessons.I learned how not to judge how to be a kind helpful member of humanity.Will be recommending and gifting to friends.#netgalley#randomhouse

I had never heard of Valarie Kaur before reading this memoir, but she is a renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer. She’s also incredibly thoughtful, insightful, and impressively understanding toward people who are different from her. It took me a while to finish See No Stranger because it is heavy—beautifully written and straight up breathtaking, no exaggeration—but, good grief, she covers some tough subjects. Not only does she discuss her personal experiences with racism and sexual assault (she grew up with her Sikh family in the farmland of white-washed central California). But she also describes her years as a law student observing “life” at Guantánamo Bay and later fighting for prison reform, as well as her years as an activist helping communities recover from brutal acts of violence fueled by xenophobic prejudice.

The deep level of hate she describes in this book is damn near unbearable to read, especially given our current political climate. But her message to stay open, to commit to an attitude of “wonder,” especially when interacting with people who are (often extremely) different from us is powerful. When she describes speaking to the guards at Guantánamo Bay, specifically to one guard who inconceivably complains that the prisoners have more freedom than he does, and then forcing herself to not shut down and judge, but instead ask questions to understand his point of view, was incredible. Inspirational.

“You are a part of me that I don’t yet know” is a common refrain in this book. It’s a powerful reminder that hate only breeds more hate, but love and understanding are what make us feel light, connected, and free. With 38 days until the election, this is exactly what I needed to read right now.

Thank you to NetGalley and One World for this reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

"Our minds are primed to see the world in terms of us and them. We can't help it. The moment we look upon another person's face, our minds discern in an instant whether or not they are one of us - part of our family or community or country - or one of them. This happens before conscious thought. Our bodies release hormones that prime us to trust and listen to those we see as part of us and to fear and resent them....The most powerful force shaping who we see as us and them is the dominant stories in our social landscape. They are produced by ideologies and theologies that divide the world into good or bad, saved or unsaved, with us or against us. Stereotypes are the most reductive kind of story: They reduce others to single, crude images. In the United States, the stereotypes are persistent: black as criminal, brown as illegal, indigenous as savage, Muslims and Sikhs as terrorists, Jews as controlling, Hindus as primitive, Asians of all kinds as perpetually foreign, queer and trans people as sinful, disabled people as pitiable, and women and girls as property....We live in a culture that makes us strange to ourselves." (Excerpt from Part 1, Chapter 1)

Wonder is two-fold. Wonder at the amazing sights we see, experience, witness. For example, I am awed - I have wonder - at the blue of the Mediterranean seas. There is also wonder as in curiosity. For example, I am curious - I wonder - why I utilized a coping method of chewing the skin on my thumbs after a traumatic event in 6th grade. When we see strangers instead of people when we treat people who differ from us as "them's" we have lost our wonder. Both kinds. This is how Kaur begins her beautiful telling of learning how to see no stranger. To be sure, Kaur was raised within a family and faith system that encouraged her to wonder and she had a foundation upon which to build when things began to get hard.

With a tender heart and a capacity to wonder Kaur took the road, literally, following 9/11. She had a deep need to talk to people, hear their stories, and share those with people inclined to think and live, in us versus them mindsets. As a result, she had her own journey of healing, reconciliation, and revolutionary love to travel. With candor and grace Valarie Kaur invites us to journey her road with her, she has wisdom to share. She has valuable insights into removing the barriers that built us versus them. Her own personal journey of traveling out of woundedness from sexual assault serves as a strong metaphor for how we, in America, can enter into healing and quit wounding. With first-hand accounts of the tragedies that our nation endured following 9/11 Kaur provides realistic examples of how revolutionary love transforms us versus them into we.

I soaked in this book and Valarie Kaur's writing. I'm going to read this important title again because I don't want to just soak in what she has to share, I was to be saturated with it so I overflow and share it with others. I highlighted large portions to return to, to mark the thoughts I need to go back and really soak in. I've been doing personal work to abolish the us versus them mindest I was raised within (unintentionally but it still happened) and this work by Valarie Kaur has motivated me to work harder at making sure I live out of a we mentality.

This was a really fascinating read that I think will find readership at the library, so I have purchased a couple copies. Thank you so much!

Valarie Kaur’s ‘See No Stranger’ is a fascinating, life affirming, poetically written memoir and call to action for us all. She is a Sikh American woman that has devoted her life to care and action as an activist, civil rights lawyer, and filmmaker. Kaur’s ethos is to “see no stranger” and to wonder about everyone, showing them compassion, even if their words and/or actions are filled with hate. Hatred often comes from a place of pain or loss. She details the hate speech and violent actions suffered by so many due to skyrocketing Islamophobia and bigotry in the US following the 9/11 attacks. Kaur recounted stunning acts of forgiveness by individuals and a focus on building community following brutal hate crimes. Kaur uses birth as a metaphor for activists and encourages them to push and breathe and repeat the process. This will give us endurance in activism. My one complaint is that the book seemed a little longer than it needed to be and some of the chapters were a bit meandering. The audiobook was wonderful as Kaur sings the Sikh devotional poems that are interspersed throughout the text. Valarie Kaur’s openness, vulnerability, and strength are absolutely inspiring and I will try harder to embody these characteristics in my own life.

Thank you NetGalley and One World/Random House Publishing Group for providing this ARC.

Reading Valarie Kaur’s See No Stranger feels like taking a deep breath. Kaur’s book is about revolutionary love that she describes as “sweet labor: fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life-giving—a choice we make over and over again.” In writing about sweet labor and the struggle of love, Kaur is not sentimental. She begins her memoir with a beautiful chapter on wonder, but in this very chapter Kaur depicts her early childhood experiences of racism—noting that the children around her were not raised to wonder, to be curious about her and others who did not fit the white, Christian norm of her hometown. Kaur validates the anger, joy, and grief that encompasses systems-changing love and narrates personal experiences of these deep emotions by sharing her story as a Sikh American, as an activist and lawyer, and as a woman who has experienced sexual assault and various forms of violence. My only critique of See No Stranger is that it does a lot. At times, it feels like it’s attempting to do too much. The book is primarily a memoir, but it is also a primer on Sikhism, a detailed account of violence and terrorism against Sikhs in America post-9/11, and an instruction manual for activism and sustainability in social transformation. Kaur wonderfully presses into the intersectional nature of her identity and work in the world, but I found myself bogged down by the magnitude of all this book is presenting at once. While feeling somewhat lost in the transitions of this book’s multidimensional offerings, See No Stranger was a timely read that is reshaping my imagination of America and the work of social transformation. This book is for anyone who wants to be encouraged and challenged toward participating in the birth of a more just and beautiful world, for those who want to learn about activism and rest in the midst of a long fight for equity, and for those who want to be exposed to the beauty of Sikhism.

When I first started reading See No Stranger, I was expecting it to be too "woo woo" for my taste. I thought it would preach love and understanding without carefully considering the very real issues that cause trauma and despair, much like many other similar titles. Instead, this memoir/spiritual exploration/call to action expertly wove together the strands of varied human experiences and emotions. This book could not be coming out at a better time, as I think many people are searching for ways to make sense of our present and are working to formulate a means of moving forward.

Using a birthing metaphor (which she makes inclusive in a conscientious way), Kaur sheds light on different aspects of her own life, as well as moments in our nation's recent history and present. The stages of labor represent events and times that are both deeply personal and/or felt by many. Her Sikh faith and identity factor largely into her practice of Revolutionary Love, but she also makes that accessible to readers of all backgrounds and beliefs. The writing is easy to follow, if a bit sentimental. I finished the book and immediately looked up The Revolutionary Love Project, so if she's recruiting then this is a fantastic tool that piqued my typically-jaded attention.

Some books are so perfectly in tune with their time that reading them feels almost spooky. As though the author has moved beyond our earthly struggles and found solutions from sources we have overlooked amidst our solitary pursuits. We were too busy not listening. Author Valarie Kaur took time off very intentionally and composed this book from myriad sources, her own lifelong journals and philosophy and religious texts. That her book will be published in the midst of COVID-19 and racial demonstrations that span the globe makes it unbelievably timely. I was moved, bothered, provoked, challenged and inspired by so much of her writing; I was also comforted beyond belief. I found hope within it when I needed it most. This is a book that should travel from reader to reader with love. I received my copy from from the publisher through NetGalley. Many thanks.

One of the hardest things we can do as humans is to love our enemies. It’s one of those precepts that is easier said than done, but civil rights lawyer, activist, and filmmaker Valarie Kaur has given us a book that can help us to do this work.

In See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, Kaur provides us a book that is part memoir and part how to manual on how to practice what she describes as “revolutionary love”. She defines revolutionary love as the active decisions humans make to wonder about others, our opponents, and ourselves. This act of wonder, she says, will help make the world a better place. Failing to wonder ultimately leads to violence against people who we consider the other.

In her book, Kaur describes in vivid detail how many men in her own Sikh community were killed after 9/11 because ignorant, racist people assumed they were Muslim terrorists. She chronicles a must read account of the 2012 Oak Creek massacre, which was the most violent hate crime against Sikhs in American history. She is also frank about the verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse that was inflicted on her by the hands of men in her Sikh community. In this book she describes the steps she and the families of hate crime victims took to wonder about their transgressors. Ultimately she finds that there are no monsters in this world only wounded humans.

Kaur’s writing is beautiful, there are so many quotes in here that are gems.

I learned alot from this book especially as it relates to Sikhism, its origins, the significance of the turban, and even some shabads, sacred Sikh songs.

This is a perfect book to read in our current moment. Many Americans are racially segregated by neighborhoods, houses of worship, politics, etc. This segregation results in alot of people being fearful of the other, which leads to the senseless killings of many people, especially people of color. Reading this book will help readers live out the words of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, who stated “I see no stranger. I see no enemy.” Kaur’s book gives us the tools to become warrior-sages in the never ending fight for equality for all people.

Thanks to NetGalley, One World, and Valarie Kaur for a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

Rarely does a book come along that makes an impression on me as See No Stranger has.

In the 1990s, several of M Scott Peck's books, including Different Drum (about building community) enabled me to re-imagine my life and begin a healing of my soul. Just a few years ago, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari presented a revolutionary overview of human history that enabled me to re-imagine humanity.

Now in 2020 comes Valarie Kaur with See No Stranger to empower me to re-imagine my life as an activist (and writer) who can make an immense difference to bring progressive change to the world. Well, my tiny corner of the world, anyway.

Ms Kaur fearlessly makes herself vulnerable in the pages of her revealing and powerful memoir while simultaneously setting forth a new archetype of activist facing down every challenge with Revolutionary Love.

I truly loved reading See No Stranger and can't wait to read it again on my Kindle for PC app so I can highlight the many passages I found deeply profound and immensely inspiring.

I loved this book. My first time reading it, I was completely drawn in and I felt myself losing the outer world around me. When I finished the book, I needed to read it yet again, so I did. It is one of my favorites I’ve read in awhile and I highly recommend it.

See No Stranger is an incredibly important and essential book. It has so much to say about compassion for ourselves and for our neighbors, and even more to say about how to see every person as a neighbor. I devoured this in an afternoon and I'll be reading this again soon to take notes as soon as I've suggested it for a bit. Highly, highly recommended.

Thank you for the ecopy of this book. I will be posting a full review on Goodreads, Amazon, and Instagram! Many thanks.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley

There times when this book feels like it cannot decide what It wants to be, like it is trying to do too much. One level, it functions as a memoir, a very good one. On another level, it functions as a guide to dealing with those people – ones who disagree with you or who exhibit racism. On a third level, it is a discussion of Sikh belief and philosophy. Again, like the memoir, interesting. But there are times when the two book types mesh and times when they do not.

For the most part, the memoir and philosophy work well together. In detailing the influence of her family and belief, of her experiences growing up and as an activist, the book is extremely good and enjoyable. It is especially moving when Kaur details the interactions with her cousin.

The problems come when the philosophy and memoir go beyond family, when Kaur talks about her work with activist. The book would have benefited with more detail her movement, the finding of her, and even her decision to start one. There is also a strangeness about her descriptions of her interactions with soldiers at Gutanemo Bay and prison guards. Let me be clear, considering what Kaur was exposed to, her sense of distrust and wariness make sense. And she seems to be very honest in her accounts. But there is a sense of dismissal or of superiority in her reporting of the conversations. This sense does not occur when she engages a group of men who are voicing racist comments. It occurs when she wonders if a prison guard feels love, when the reporting of a prison guard who has PTSD is downplayed, when she realizes that the guard is just part of a system that he does not fully realized. If this was a more developed book about the movement or even a memoir there would have been self-actualization in these passages, there would have been something at least in addition to that superiority and dismissal feeling.

That reservation aside, the book is engrossing. It is something you should read. Kaur’s philosophy and idea, the need to think with reaction other than anger is something that we need more of today. In particular, the sections on the coming to terms with the expectations of family and what the heart wants are good.