From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire

by Sarah Jaffe

From a social critic and journalist, a poignant book that encourages publicly grieving of what we've lost in order to move towards a hopeful future. 

“Detailed, lucid and richly sourced, Sarah Jaffe’s From the Ashes shows how the transformational power of grief can fuel revolutionary change.” ―BookPage (starred review)

Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning the futures that are being so brutally curtailed. At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a radical act.  

Through in-depth reporting intertwined with memoir, Sarah Jaffe shows how public memorialization has become more than a refusal or a it is a path to imagining a better world. When we are able to mourn the lives, the homes, and the worlds we have lost, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future. 

"[A] passionately felt study of global protest movements … A writer of great curiosity and emotional honesty." —Times Literary Supplement (UK)

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Grief, Economics, Audiobook, History, Mental Health

400 pages, Hardcover

Published September 10, 2024

Reviews

[Marianne]

Really mixed feelings about this. I love Sarah Jaffe's writing. It's evocative and beautiful, which political writing often isn't. The memoir-like breaks about her own experiences with grief, which I found sincerely moving, are the real standout in the book. The rest of the book is well written and reported. The stories are interesting and informative. But, for me, the politics that Jaffe uses them to point to leave a lot to be desired. I think the politics of turning toward community care and mutual aid is a response to a lack of power, and the way they're presented here as a path to healing in the midst of destruction doesn't really lead to the kind of mass politics that can build the power to challenge the ruling class that causes so much of our collective grief. I was struck by a tone of resignation that the destruction will continue unabated and the most we can do is try to protect each other as best we can.

[Sukhpreet]

A great and novel exploration of grief, personal and political. Heavily reference-laden, in a way that felt less accessible and more academic than her last book, for me, but perhaps that was more an issue of flow, in that it felt she was working through a lot of references to the work (organizing and writing) of others too quickly, at times. I suppose I wanted to read more of the personal passages regarding her experiences of grief--likely because I read it while grieving.

[jennifer]

Whew. A ferocious barrage of anguish and anger, like you’re inside a wailing scream. It was a lot, and then it was more, and more and more, and then the footnotes sent me down dozens of very deep rabbit holes (and that’s before forging the acknowledgments section). I have spent the last few years obsessed with a lot of the core ideas this book is also obsessed with, because it’s tapping something that is shaping us and our moment in major ways, on top of perennial usefulness.

It swamped me and was tough going for all that’s worthwhile there, but I love that it came home to a (dizzyingly referenced, with a lot of theory) paean to care — because care work is how I found Sarah’s reporting in the first place and I see her as a bard of care, of chronicling where care and work and self and relationships and feeling all intersect, and what it all means and why it matters.

I also love how she is living my young punk dream in all the profoundly hard and beautiful ways. May she keep it coming; we need it and all the intersecting conversations before and ahead.

[Mary]

I had high hopes for this, but Jaffe clearly wanted to write a memoir rather than a piece of reportage, and it shows: she's far more interested in herself than in any of her subjects. This could have been a much better book.

[Evelyn Jean]

From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire by Sarah Jaffe is a piercing and profoundly human meditation on what it means to mourn and how, in doing so, we reclaim our capacity to build a more compassionate world.

In a time marked by collective loss of lives, of stability, of faith in progress Jaffe dares to frame grief not as paralysis, but as power. Through sharp political insight and lyrical prose, she reveals how acknowledging pain becomes a radical act of resistance against systems that demand endurance instead of empathy. From pandemic mourning to climate anxiety, she draws a direct line between personal sorrow and social transformation.

Jaffe’s argument is bold yet deeply tender: that to grieve is to remember our humanity, and that through communal mourning, we rediscover solidarity, purpose, and hope. Her writing bridges the analytical and the emotional, calling readers to imagine a world rebuilt not through denial, but through care.

For readers of The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, From the Ashes is both a manifesto and a mirror an urgent reminder that even in despair, we can kindle the beginnings of renewal.

[Robin]

Sarah Jaffe is a beautiful writer, and I am particularly drawn to both memoir and stories of grief and the grieving process, so her latest book drew me in immediately. The author's introductory sections are heartfelt, humble, honest, and resonant. However, the meat of the book turns its focus on socio-political problems, with an overarching condemnation of the long, dark shadow of capitalism. Jaffe has a lot of expertise here as well, but I found the joining of her two foci a bit forced.

Grief is everywhere, she suggests, in our losses of jobs, homes, climate stability, security, community. It's an intriguing concept, but it didn't feel like an apt comparison between her personal grief and the community grief she highlighted.

[Alexander Curtis]

Another one of those 'things how they are, viewed through a certain lens from the precipice' books. It's probably instructive that even centrist dad par excellence Ezra Klein is invoking Gramsci's 'monsters' bit at the top of his shows. These books (see eg Disaster Nationalism) always seem to have flames on the cover, a consensus augury.

Not always successful syncretism: often the organising principle felt a long way from the material, sometimes inelegantly reasserted. Really good stuff on deindustrialization, the grief of the gentrified, and a blistering contribution on the genocide in Gaza.

Bun the star system on Goodreads.

[Sara]

Is fascism getting you down? This book is the remedy.

Sarah Jaffe shows us how the transformational power of grief can help us live more hopefully through the current crises and the upcoming ones. She talks to activists and grievers from all over the world to get their perspectives about loss, both personal and political. Jaffe's prose strikes all the right chords and I can be grateful again for living and loving (and losing) after reading this.

[A]

First line: “A police car on fire is the perfect embodiment of grief.”

Last line: “And so I say here, to close, remembering all the people we have lost, the names too numerous to say here, the fathers sisters cousins lovers brothers friends, the ancestors we claim for ourselves: may their memory be for a revolution.”

[Carrie]

I've been a Sarah Jaffe fan ever since she covered Occupy Wall Street. I recommend folks read this book — especially those who could use more information about the interlocking crises of the 2020s. I knocked off a couple of stars, though, because I found the throughline of grief to be a bit of a weak thread attempting to connect disparate issues.

[Bruin Mccon]

Felt this book hard, from the late father who worked too long and too hard to the life raising up stories of others. Also loved, “May their memory be for revolution.” What a freaking line!

[musa]

What a brilliant testimony to the power of communal grief and collective actions.

[Ellen]

4.5 stars.

[Venneh]

Jaffe combines her own working through the grief of her father's death along with the changing landscape as a part of COVID. Jaffe combines short interludes on how she handled her grieving with various topics that have been coming up over the last five years (climate change, deindustrialization, community care, state violence). Fantastic, galvanizing read.

[Jordyn Williams]

I think that this book would be be “a lot” or “too much” for some people. I can almost see the eye roll and hear the “bleeding heart liberal” comment. But the stories that Sarah Jaffe reports are worthy of the grief and rage emoted through her storytelling. I’ve come to realize that people who don’t “get” anger are often swaddled in many layers of privilege. My own privilege has distanced me from experiencing many of the injustices reported in this book, to the extent that I felt uncomfortable with my own complicity within these systems of destruction. I’m glad to have read this for the opportunity to see others and myself as part of a web of collective action.