Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by
Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. In the framework of emergence, the whole is a mirror of the parts. Existence is fractal - the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet. Change is constant. This book is about how we can shape the changes we experience to match our intentions using strategic methods that are as adaptive, resilient decentralised, and interdependent as the patterns of flocking birds or differentiating cells. A secular spirituality based equally on science and science fiction.
We will have a limited number of free copies available to give to our Campus community members later in the quarter. Please visit the library to receive yours. Thank you to the UW Race and Equity Initiative for providing funding for these books.
Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements by
Whenever we imagine a world without war or injustice, we are engaging in speculative fiction. Radicals and activists devote their lives to envisioning such worlds, and then go about trying to create them. This collection brings together 20 such stories, as well as essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Named for the great Octavia Butler, giant of science fiction and a rare woman of colour in her field, this engaging and enlightening collection is the first book to explore the connections between radical science fiction and movements for social change.
Parable of the Sower by
This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" (John Green, New York Times)--now with a new foreword by N. K. Jemisin. When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.
We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology by
This anthology of speculative fiction stories on the themes of colonialism and cultural imperialism focuses on the viewpoints of the colonized. Sixteen authors share their experiences of being the silent voices in history and on the wrong side of the final frontier; their fantasies of a reality in which straight, cis, able-bodied, rich, anglophone, white males don't tell us how they won every war; and their revenge against the alien oppressor settling their "new world."
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by
Reflections on the legacy and impact of radical black feminists of the 1960s on today's feminist and anti-racist movements. The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women's liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organisation and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today's struggles.
The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender by
"What does liberation mean when I have incarnated in a particular body, with a particular shape, color, and sex?" In The Way of Tenderness, Zen priest Zenju Earthlyn Manuel brings Buddhist philosophies of emptiness and appearance to bear on race, sexuality, and gender, using wisdom forged through personal experience and practice to rethink problems of identity and privilege. Manuel brings her own experiences as a lesbian black woman into conversation with Buddhism to square our ultimately empty nature with superficial perspectives of everyday life. Her hard-won insights reveal that dry wisdom alone is not sufficient to heal the wounds of the marginalized; an effective practice must embrace the tenderness found where conventional reality and emptiness intersect. Only warmth and compassion can cure hatred and heal the damage it wreaks within us. This is a book that will teach us all.
Contact members of the team via email with questions, comments, or concerns:
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At the Community Reads Emergent Strategy event, participants engaged in discussion and activities that encouraged exploration of the Emergent Strategy Principles and the chapter Fractals: the relationship between small and large, along with other aspects of this rich, transformative text. The contents of the zine are products of the event. |
Everyone is invited:
UW Bothell and Cascadia College students, faculty, and staff are invited to a discussion of Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown.
Date: Wednesday May 1, 2019
Time: 12:00 - 1:30pm
Place: Library Room, LB1 - 205
We highly recommend reading prior to the event:
Our goals for the Community Reads program are to:
At the Event:
Community Reads aims to inspire dialog about important issues facing our diverse campus communities. Join campus community members as we engage with hands-on activities and discuss themes from the book.
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book teaches us to map, assess, and learn from the swirling structures around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a feminist and afro-futurist incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.
adrienne maree brown is author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. She is a writer, social justice facilitator, pleasure activist, healer and doula living in Detroit. Read more about adrienne's life and work on her website.
In the study and practice of emergent strategy, there are core principles that have emerged and that guide me in learning and using this idea and method in the world. I gather them here with the expectation that they will grow.
Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)¹
Change is constant. (Be like water.)¹
There is always enough time for the right work.
There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have.² Find it.
Never a failure, always a lesson.³
Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.)⁴
Move at the speed of trust.⁵ Focus on critical connections more than critical mass--build the resilience by building the relationships.
Less prep, more presence.
What you pay attention to grows.
¹"You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip, and it can crash. Become like water my friend," Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey (Warner Home Video, 2000).
²Idea articulated by Taj James in the cofacilitation of environmental justice resource redistribution initiative Building Equity and Alignment's inaugural meeting in 2013.
³Rihanna has this concept tattooed on her chest.
⁴This is an inversion of the quote "If you don't trust the people, they become untrustworthy," from Stephen Mitchell's translation, Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (New York: HarperCollins, 1988).
⁵This is communication strategist Mervyn Marcano's remix of Stephen Covey's "speed of trust" concept.
From Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown, pages 41-42. Copyright adrienne maree brown.
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