"Let's all stay alive and celebrate on the other side." -Alexander Chee

This slim volume contains a surprising number of heavyweights in our cultural and literary landscape. As I read through it, I was awed not only by the contents but how they were arranged within the book. This anthology was obviously so lovingly crafted and curated. It feels like a sacred object, reads like a modern scripture.

There were several contributions that I had to stop and read aloud to whoever was next to me, and many more that brought tears to my eyes. There is hope in these pages, and a sense of community, and an honest vibe check for what it's like to be alive right now. This is the book we all need in 2025. I can see myself buying several copies as gifts for friends and family. This is a book I will return to again and again.

Thank you for this ARC! WOW!

This book is the perfect encapsulation of all the feelings I have about the world we are living in, and yet at the end I walked away feeling hopeful.

This anthology presents itself as “a community in book form.” A liberatory collection of twenty-six voices offering pathways for action and care amid ongoing political and social uncertainty. It’s a powerful and necessary vision, which I deeply respect. The very idea of bringing together such a range of contributors to collectively imagine and articulate care, survival, and resistance is vital in a world shaped by multiple forms of past and current violence that we face in all its forms: slow, structural, personal, sweeping, acute. The book's premise speaks to the urgent need for solidarity and collective imagination in this reality.

That said, I find myself sitting with a complicated response. As a reader, I struggled to fully connect with many of the contributions. While each piece was undoubtedly personal and shaped by lived experiences under oppressive systems, the anthology as a whole didn’t quite come together as the “community” it aspired to be. Rather than feeling held within a collective, I often felt like I was reading individual reflections that, while powerful, didn't always speak to or build on that vision.

I sometimes felt unsure of who the audience was meant to be. Many pieces appeared to emerge from a liberal perspective and seemed to assume a similarly liberal reader; as a result, they often stopped short of challenging the deeper structural foundations of the systems they critiqued. At times, this made the book feel more reformist than radical and more invested in recognition within the system than in imagining or organizing beyond it.

There were moments that felt somewhat underdeveloped, and I found myself wondering whether the contributors had the space or time to bring their most fully realized work to the page. It left me questioning whether the pieces reflect the full depth and insight these writers are clearly capable of, or if the urgency to publish something timely may have limited the work’s overall cohesion and impact.

I also feel a need to state my discomfort with the decision to donate 5% of proceeds to the ACLU. While the ACLU has done critical work on many social justice fronts, their recent institutional decisions, such as declining to support staff demands to divest from Israel and publicly condemn the role of the U.S. in the genocide of Palestinians (which they call a ‘war on Gaza’ (obscuring the extreme imbalance of power and erasing the cultural and national identity of the Palestinian people), raise questions about their role in upholding the very systems this book seeks to challenge. Choosing the ACLU as a beneficiary feels misaligned with the more liberatory intentions voiced by some of the contributors.

Overall, I appreciate what this book is aiming to do. I admire its ambition and its intention toward care, and I’m sure that many readers may find resonance within its pages. For me, however, it ultimately didn’t go as far as I hoped in naming or resisting the deep structural violence we are entangled in. I believe we need more from our liberatory visions, more clarity, more connection, more of the community the book promised, and perhaps this is one step toward that, but not the destination itself.

2.5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and Washington Square Press for the advanced copy for review. Opinions are my own.

This book felt like a balm for the times we are all living through. I appreciated the variety of voices, forms, genres, and stories. There was urgency, fear, brutal honesty, but also lots of hope. It was just what I needed.

I'm writing this review on a morning where the biggest news is that our president is about to attack a US State with their own National Guard. It's surreal. I've been reading The People's Project in between those spaces in time where I'm not checking in to see what's going down in Los Angeles. The poems and the essays have provided me with the deep breaths that I've needed to take and the reminder that we are not alone, that we can all stand strong if we stand together. I'm not going to go on and on about all of the big names in this book because, to me, that's not what it's about. It's about community and hope. It's about endurance. It's a statement that we will get through this together.
Chances are, when you stumble onto this book, the news of the day may be pretty insane. I recommend buying this book for yourself and keeping it somewhere easily accessible so that it's right there for you when you need to take your own deep breaths. Consider it a kindness to yourself.
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read the free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was absolutely hypnotized. From Palestine, to COVID lockdown, to the Black Lives Matter movement-It covered it all. It wasn't afraid to speak out of turn, it was brutal and honest and RAW. To fight the system we need more youth reading books like these. People, in general, but especially the younger generation that are growing to know the current state of the world as the only way it's ever been. It's important that they see multiple view points and time periods, to know that we've fought this before and we will continue fighting.
5/5 damn stars.

I feel a little guilty saying this book found me at the right moment because it’s an Advanced Reader Copy (thanks, NetGalley and Washington Square Press!) and most y’all will have to wait until the fall for this one. But it really did. I’ve been feeling so heavy about the world. This collection both shook me by the shoulders to tell me to stop feeling so dispirited and somehow also handed me a cup of tea and told me grief and sadness are ok, too.

The world is hard in ways that feel both new and shockingly old. This collection—with some real heavy hitters contributing—gets the tone just right. It was inspired by conversations between Saeed Jones and Maggie Smith, which tells folks who follow their work everything they need to know. They built a collection rooted in resistance and love and grief.

Nearly every piece is looking backward and forward to build a case for resilience. And with each contribution being just a couple of pages, it’s accessible and moves quickly through so many layers.

I can’t share the passages I highlighted yet, but there is some real, grounding truth happening in here. I hope folks who are feeling the weight of the escalation of violence happening seemingly everywhere will find this book at the right moment, too.