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Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition
"Well-informed and witty...Biggers succeeds in showing how the long tradition of resistance movements continues today."--Publishers Weekly
“These times are tumultuous and divisive. But Jeff Biggers, a gifted writer who approaches history as expansively as Howard Zinn and as passionately as Eduardo Galeano, finds resistance everywhere. He shows us how freedom movements—led by people of color, women, and commoners, from revolutionary-era rebels to today’s loud majority—have pulled American democracy away from tyranny and toward humanity time and again. These powerful, urgent essays remind us that everywhere there is resistance there is hope.” —Jeff Chang, author of We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation
“Reading this book, I saw history vanquish amnesia, David slay Goliath, and tenacity take down tyrants. I saw a long, unbroken chain of resistance extending back through centuries. I saw the world saved over and over. I saw heroes and declared them my ancestors. I heard stories to inspire bold action. I found traditions I want to pass on.” —Sandra Steingraber, activist and author of Living Downstream and Raising Elijah
Across cities, towns, and campuses, Americans are grappling with overwhelming challenges and the daily fallout from the most authoritarian White House policies in recent memory.
In an inspiring narrative history, Jeff Biggers reframes today’s battles as a continuum of a vibrant American tradition. Resistance chronicles the courageous resistance movements that insured the benchmarks of our democracy—movements that served on the front lines of the American Revolution, the defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the struggle to end slavery, the defeat of fascism during World War II, and various civil rights and environmental protection achievements.
Legendary historian Studs Terkel praised Biggers’s The United States of Appalachia, now in its eighth printing, as a "how-to book" in the tradition of the American Revolution. With Resistance, Biggers opens a new window into American history and its meaning today. As an intimate people’s history, Resistance is a provocative reconsideration of the American Revolution and its unfolding promises, bringing alive early Native American, African American, and immigrant struggles, women’s rights, and pioneering environmental justice movements. Biggers shows our republic of resistance has served our history, especially in times when our nation—and its leaders—need to be held accountable.
“With compelling and engaging prose, Jeff Biggers lays out the case for Resistance in the age of Trump. Using Common Sense, Thomas Paine’s incendiary call to overthrow the British, as the thread that binds his narrative, Biggers interweaves stories from before the American Revolution to the present to offer the reader a view of history not found in most high school textbooks. From the armed resistance of the Powhatan in 1622 to the protests of the Water Protectors against the Dakota Access Pipeline; from the speeches and essays of Maria Stewart, ‘the first Black feminist-abolitionist in America,’ to the words of Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza, he entreats us to remember that the constitution of our country is founded on the premise of ‘We the People.’ There are so many lessons to learn from Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition. Our turbulent times, Biggers shows us, have eerie and chilling parallels to the birth pangs of our nation and to the continuing struggles of ‘We the People’ to define and claim our voices. At this moment in history, when even the act of listening to the news can cause despair, Biggers gives us hope. In response to our darkness, he reaffirms the light that resistance offers. He shows us that the free expression of Resistance, whether with the pen, our marching feet, the taking of a knee before a football game, the words to a song—to name a few—remains a cornerstone of what it means to be American.” —Naomi Benaron, author of the Bellwether Prize–winning Running the Rift
“Resist we must, resist we will—and as this volume powerfully reminds us, in so doing we are acting on the deepest American instincts.” —Bill McKibben, author of Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
“These times are tumultuous and divisive. But Jeff Biggers, a gifted writer who approaches history as expansively as Howard Zinn and as passionately as Eduardo Galeano, finds resistance everywhere. He shows us how freedom movements—led by people of color, women, and commoners, from revolutionary-era rebels to today’s loud majority—have pulled American democracy away from tyranny and toward humanity time and again. These powerful, urgent essays remind us that everywhere there is resistance there is hope.” —Jeff Chang, author of We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation
“Reading this book, I saw history vanquish amnesia, David slay Goliath, and tenacity take down tyrants. I saw a long, unbroken chain of resistance extending back through centuries. I saw the world saved over and over. I saw heroes and declared them my ancestors. I heard stories to inspire bold action. I found traditions I want to pass on.” —Sandra Steingraber, activist and author of Living Downstream and Raising Elijah
Across cities, towns, and campuses, Americans are grappling with overwhelming challenges and the daily fallout from the most authoritarian White House policies in recent memory.
In an inspiring narrative history, Jeff Biggers reframes today’s battles as a continuum of a vibrant American tradition. Resistance chronicles the courageous resistance movements that insured the benchmarks of our democracy—movements that served on the front lines of the American Revolution, the defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the struggle to end slavery, the defeat of fascism during World War II, and various civil rights and environmental protection achievements.
Legendary historian Studs Terkel praised Biggers’s The United States of Appalachia, now in its eighth printing, as a "how-to book" in the tradition of the American Revolution. With Resistance, Biggers opens a new window into American history and its meaning today. As an intimate people’s history, Resistance is a provocative reconsideration of the American Revolution and its unfolding promises, bringing alive early Native American, African American, and immigrant struggles, women’s rights, and pioneering environmental justice movements. Biggers shows our republic of resistance has served our history, especially in times when our nation—and its leaders—need to be held accountable.
“With compelling and engaging prose, Jeff Biggers lays out the case for Resistance in the age of Trump. Using Common Sense, Thomas Paine’s incendiary call to overthrow the British, as the thread that binds his narrative, Biggers interweaves stories from before the American Revolution to the present to offer the reader a view of history not found in most high school textbooks. From the armed resistance of the Powhatan in 1622 to the protests of the Water Protectors against the Dakota Access Pipeline; from the speeches and essays of Maria Stewart, ‘the first Black feminist-abolitionist in America,’ to the words of Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza, he entreats us to remember that the constitution of our country is founded on the premise of ‘We the People.’ There are so many lessons to learn from Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition. Our turbulent times, Biggers shows us, have eerie and chilling parallels to the birth pangs of our nation and to the continuing struggles of ‘We the People’ to define and claim our voices. At this moment in history, when even the act of listening to the news can cause despair, Biggers gives us hope. In response to our darkness, he reaffirms the light that resistance offers. He shows us that the free expression of Resistance, whether with the pen, our marching feet, the taking of a knee before a football game, the words to a song—to name a few—remains a cornerstone of what it means to be American.” —Naomi Benaron, author of the Bellwether Prize–winning Running the Rift
“Resist we must, resist we will—and as this volume powerfully reminds us, in so doing we are acting on the deepest American instincts.” —Bill McKibben, author of Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
224 pages, Hardcover
Published July 3, 2018
13 people are currently reading
159 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Biggers
14 books49 followersJeff Biggers is a cultural historian, journalist, playwright and novelist. He is the coauthor of the novel DISTURBING THE BONES with filmmaker Andrew Davis, and author of numerous nonfiction works, including IN SARDINIA: An Unexpected Journey in Italy (Melville House), TRIALS OF A SCOLD (St. Martin's), longlisted for the PEN Bograd Weld Award. Recipient of the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting, Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award, Biggers has worked as a freelance journalist, radio correspondent, playwright, historian and educator across the US, Europe, Mexico and India. His stories have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera America, Salon, The Nation and on National Public Radio and Public Radio International. He blogs regularly for the Huffington Post. Contributing editor at Bloomsbury Review.
His nonfiction works include State Out of the Union, selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top Ten Social Science Book in 2012; Reckoning at Eagle Creek, recipient of the Delta Award for Literature and the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting; In the Sierra Madre, winner of the Foreword Magazine Travel Book of the Year Award; and The United States of Appalachia, praised by the Citizen Times as a "masterpiece of popular history." He also served as co-editor of No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems of Don West, which won the American Book Award, and wrote the foreword to the re-issue of Huey Perry's classic, They'll Cut Off Your Project.
Biggers founded the Climate Narrative Project, a media arts and advocacy project.
For more info: www.jeffbiggers.com
His nonfiction works include State Out of the Union, selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top Ten Social Science Book in 2012; Reckoning at Eagle Creek, recipient of the Delta Award for Literature and the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting; In the Sierra Madre, winner of the Foreword Magazine Travel Book of the Year Award; and The United States of Appalachia, praised by the Citizen Times as a "masterpiece of popular history." He also served as co-editor of No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems of Don West, which won the American Book Award, and wrote the foreword to the re-issue of Huey Perry's classic, They'll Cut Off Your Project.
Biggers founded the Climate Narrative Project, a media arts and advocacy project.
For more info: www.jeffbiggers.com
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 26, 2018
Powerful essays on some key moments in history when unsung American heroes and movements held our nation accountable for fundamental credos of inalienable rights "seeded" before and after the American Revolution. Chockfull of incredible stories of those lost or forgotten in history, especially women and people of color. "Resistance" is therefore more than protest, but what the author calls an "act of renewal," in the tradition of Thomas Paine. Should be required reading in every school, community, group. The last chapter, "Cities of Resistance," is an original look at the role of environmental justice and the need for climate action today.
March 29, 2019
Keep resisting.
Full review to come.
Full review to come.
December 16, 2020
I only wish the book was longer,
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews