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Rehearsals for Living

Written by: Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Narrated by: Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Marcia Johnson, Prince Amponsah
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Publisher's Summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
ONE OF THE CBC'S BEST CANADIAN NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2022

A revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists.


When the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, renowned artist, musician, and author of Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, began writing each other letters—a gesture sparked by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. These letters soon grew into a powerful exchange about where we go from here.

Rehearsals for Living is a captivating and visionary work—part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and reiterating the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment, Maynard and Simpson create something new: an urgent demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up other ways of ordering earthly life.

©2022 Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (P)2022 Knopf Canada

What the critics say

“A balm for despair, Rehearsals for Living . . . takes stock of our collapsing society and imagines what we might build from the wreckage. . . . A polyphonic work of critical scholarship that radically reframes the concept of survival to map a feminist, abolitionist, and anti-racist path to the future. . . . Maynard and Simpson have crafted a powerful argument that communion is both necessary and generative, and that the possibility of a better world exists as long as we are able to imagine it together.” Quill and Quire (starred review)

“Built on a beautifully communal practice, Maynard and Simpson contribute to the radical tradition of police and prison abolition and decolonization. . . . [A] celebration of Black and Indigenous epistemologies. . . Rehearsals for Living is a critical contribution to radical scholarship that organizers, scholars, and activists pushing for decolonization, police and prison abolition, climate justice, and the end of racial capitalism could all benefit from reading.” Los Angeles Review of Books

“Across the pandemic-imposed distance, Leanne and Robyn . . . constellate our brightest wounds and scars, but refuse to waste their energies of love and imagination on fixing or salvaging the Nation/State. Instead, they reorganize . . . retelling stories again and anew, of who we have been and might yet be again.” —Natalie Diaz

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A must read/listen ❤️

Unbelievably thankful for the audio of this book. An incredible and much needed book especially during these precarious times. It was not only vulnerable and honest, but truly remarked on ways we collectively can 'change the air'.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Difficult

First off the content is incredible and I cannot wait to read the book. Yes, read. Normally when I listen to Audible and it's read by the person who wrote it there's all kinds of emotion and it's absolutely fun to listen to. This was not fun it was a real struggle to listen to. I hate to say it, Leanne reading the first letter it was choppy, it was very very difficult. She sounds as though she's 6 years old (and not the person who wrote it) struggling to pronounce words and it's just very choppy with no emotion. It was just awful and I love her work, every little bit of it. I don't know why audible thought this was a good idea. I'm afraid I won't be able to listen to it any further.

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