Rehearsals for Living

by Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Amid the overlapping crises of a pandemic, ecological disaster, and global capitalism, two leading Black and Indigenous feminist theorists ask one another: what do liberated lands, minds, and bodies look like? These letters are part debate, part dialogue, and part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp thinkers, sending notes to each other during a stormy present. Featuring a foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and an afterword by Robin D.G. Kelley.

Genres: Nonfiction, Indigenous, Politics, Essays, Social Justice, Feminism, History

250 pages, Paperback

First published June 14, 2022

Reviews

[Fraser Simons]

Not rating this because at 10%+ the authors, who are not very good narrators tbh, we’re still discussing what this book was or was not, and how messy it is and how it came about. Coupled with the poor narration I just cannot be bothered, despite really liking previous books by both of them. Maybe I’d pick up the physical copy but I have a lot of those in the TBR already and I know that for a while it sure wasn’t anything of note to me, so it’s probably never going to happen.

[Amarah H-S]

nothing i can write about this book will do it justice, but it was so unique and beautiful.

the intimacy, vulnerability, and radical solidarity between maynard and simpson allows them to imagine, together, what the world could be, even whilst staring straight at the worst and scariest parts of our time. sharing histories with one another, they orient themselves towards the future — an imaginative future, a different future. what’s more, they are constantly putting in the work to build it.

this was written over covid-19 lockdown and is, in that sense, tied to a specific and highly charged period in north american life. at the same time, this felt so deeply like the book for right now. i suspect it will continue to feel like the book for future right nows, unless/until things can no longer go on this way.

edit: reading back my review and realizing how much it focuses on the large scale stuff, which probably is a symptom of where my head is at more broadly. but one of the things that really resonated with me about this book was how intimate, personal, and loving it is. it’s extremely beautiful to see maynard and simpson write about their children, their families, the environment, each other, and the ways they show love and care even in crisis.

[zara · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There are two different visions of freedom at play here. One is the freedom to evade, to deny one's responsibility to a collective social body; the other forwards a freedom that is relational, holds up freedom as collective safety." a dialogue between two brilliant thinkers nurturing a relationship and a land-based politics that shows us how our movements for Black liberation & Indigenous sovereignty are intertwined. easily one of my favorite books.

[Glennys Egan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life-changing. A gift. Will never stop thinking of this one.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was the November selection for the Rad Roopa Book Club in which I participate, but it was also one I just really wanted to read soonish (and I’ve purchased a copy as a birthday gift for a friend!). Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives was an important book for me a few years ago. I haven’t read anything from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, but her words here proved just as significant. Rehearsals for Living is a moving and meditative journey through the minds and hearts of two powerful, political women. It gets you thinking—but it should hopefully do more than that; it should get you acting.

The book is a collection of letters the two authors wrote to each other over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The letters are long and intended to be turned into a book, yet they still feel very intimate. Maynard talks about her struggles with parenting during lockdown and raising a Black child in an anti-Black society. Simpson recalls how land defence actions, like the Oka Crisis at Kanehsatà:ke in 1990, shaped her as a young activist, and connects this with ongoing Indigenous stewardship, sovereignty, and protection of the land. This is not a history book, yet you will learn history from it. It is not a manifesto, yet it left me feeling energized and invigorated.

Canada is an unjust society. A lot of people have trouble acknowledging this fact, owing perhaps to propaganda we get fed in school or a reluctance to feel like we are more like our neighbour to the south than we care to admit. Nevertheless, it’s true. We have serious issues with anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, and structural social problems that prop up a carceral, capitalist state built on colonialism and resource extraction.

Now, if you’re looking for a soft introduction to these ideas, then Rehearsals for Living is not the place. This book assumes you are at least somewhat aware of the problems Maynard and Simpson discuss. That’s what I liked so much about it: I really want to move from ally to accomplice, move beyond “antiracism 101: don’t do a racism” lectures that tend to proliferate throughout EDI training. This book is a great step in that journey, both for how it challenges the reader’s assumptions and ideas and for how it demonstrates concrete action.

I read this the week after Treaties Recognition Week here in Ontario. The first full week of November has been designated for teaching and learning about the Treaties between Canada (or its predecessor colonial governments) and First Nations. I live on territory that’s part of the Robinson–Superior Treaty of 1850. Usually in my English course, I discuss Treaties in general and then show the NFB documentary Trick or Treaty? , by Alanis Obomsawin, which is about Treaty No. 9, to the north of Thunder Bay. Treaties are an immensely important part of understanding the historical, legal, and cultural relationships between settlers and First Nations. We are all Treaty people.

So land was on my mind as I read these letters. I had tried, as best I could as a white woman, to impress upon my students (some Indigenous, some not) how much colonization comes back to land. How different the worldviews of First Nations are from those of settler-colonial institutions when it comes to even the idea of “ownership” of land. Of course, Simpson expresses it so much more eloquently than I ever could! I read some passages from one of her letters out loud to my class.

Simpson and Maynard together help to demonstrate how so many seemingly separate injustices are connected and how they have their root in the land. Black and Indigenous activisms are connected because Black and Indigenous people are both overrepresented in Canada’s prison system. Incarceration is another way of controlling who has access to, who is restricted from, certain land. Whether it’s reserves dictated by the Indian Act and Department of Indian Affairs or sentences handed down by judges empowered by jurisdictions more interested in developing land than serving the people who live upon it, the state has always had intense mechanisms available to it to exercise this kind of control.

Rehearsals for Living is also inescapably about the pandemic and how it affected life, including activism. On one hand, there was some early release of prisoners to try to stop the spread of COVID-19 in prisons and jails. On the other hand, lockdown increased the isolation of vulnerable people, made group demonstrations and protests riskier and more difficult to coordinate, and increased risks for frontline workers, who tend to be racialized people. The ground shifted between us in the past two years, and Maynard and Simpson take note of this. Their letters capture their frustration with the moment, their exhaustion, but also their irrepressible hope. Because their people are still here. Indigenous people are still here, five hundred years in to colonization. Black people are still here. The centuries-long project of genocide, the attempt to erase people in favour of persons, of labour, has not been successful.

However, as these two authors note with sincerity and admonishment, we cannot think our way out of these problems. We cannot write our way out of these problems. Simpson and Maynard both share details of their actions, how they organize, participate in, support, or otherwise enable demonstrations, protests, sit-ins, mutual aid. The state is not going to save us; we have to save ourselves. This is something I think about a lot lately, both as a white woman with a lot of privilege in our society, as well as a trans woman who experiences structural and individual discrimination. It all comes back to community-building, to finding your people, and rallying around the cause.

From prison and police abolition to mental health to climate change, Rehearsals for Living tackles the important issues of our day with grace and optimism and unapologetic honesty. Part of me worries that white women like myself will elevate this book as another kind of feather to put into our reading cap—oh, did you read Rehearsals for Living? Touching, isn’t it? Yes, I learned a lot from it—well, onto the shelf it goes! Look at how educated I am! But as tired as I can tell Maynard and Simpson are from dealing with white people, even so-called allies, I can also see a lot of hope in their writing. All of us who live here can play a role. But we need to step out onto that stage, need to take responsibility, need to start living the relationship between ourselves and the land and other people on it. At least, that’s what I took away from this.

Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.

[zaynab · Rating 5 out of 5]

wheeeww! what an epistle! what water!

[rana :) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't really like doing reviews anymore, but I want people to read this book too badly to add it to my list of voiceless ratings.

When I read Emergent Strategy earlier this year, I remember sitting with the wisdom of Octavia Butler referenced by Adrienne Marie Brown throughout. I remember repeating to myself: "Everything you touch, you change. Everything you change changes you. The only everlasting truth is change. God is change." And although I knew that envisioning change was essential to radical abolitionist work, it was hard to find comfort in change as a constant. It might be the Virgo (or mental illness) in me, but I didn't really know how to find peace in continuous world-changing, world-ending, and world beginnings.

In Rehearsals For Living, Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson showed me how to find reassurance in world-changing. They showed me how world-changing is happening all around us, all the time. It's an incredible book, probably the best I've read all year, and I'd recommend anyone interested reads it. (I'll lend you my copy if that's what it takes.)

Through their regular correspondence, Simpson and Maynard offered me, for the first time, a real living example of how abolition is "life in rehearsal," a living practice enacted in small parts all the time. It is emergent strategy for those of us not there yet, not connected to the emergence of radical world-making and world-endings (of capitalist and colonial worlds), not so much a guidebook, but a collection of memories, stories, and experiences to envision abolition through. Not only that, but this book illustrates solidarity outside of theory, reminding me that it is human, beautiful, and genuine. (It can exist, I can see it!)

Anyways, this is long enough. Just know that I am very grateful for the humility, honesty, and care Maynard and Simpson put into their book, and I'm sure I'll reach for it regularly.

[Kenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely the best book I’ve ever read and sure to be the most formative as I sit with it. GO READ IT!!!!

[Lancakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is compiled from a letter correspondence between Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson during the first year (or so) of the COVID-19 pandemic. The letters centre 3 crises: COVID, climate catastrophe and colonialism/racism and highlights the intersections in the causes, outcomes and commonalities across populations most affected/targeted. The authors are two of the most important political thinkers in "Canada" right now and it was invaluable to witness their solidarity building across their activisms. The book made me feel less alone in my despair and even gave me a little hope?

This book reminded me that even if nonfic like this can be a hard read and make me feel angry, sad etc, it can also give me hope and new ways of thinking and make me feel less alone ❤ I've set a goal to read 4 nonfic books in 2023 because reading this book was so good for me.

[kim child of the god of thunder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m still processing this one. Maybe I always will be. The idea that won’t stop echoing is about how unsustainable our current world is here, in North America, or anywhere that capitalism is. It’s not that I didn’t know that, but this conversation teased out for the first time (for me) a fuzzy, confusing, confounding image of what decolonization might actually be. It’s like a dream, and like Arundhati Roy, I can ALMOST hear it breathing.

[JC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not really a review. I do not have the time at the moment, unfortunately, to write anything remotely deserving of this beautiful book. i just have an Advent reflection that was really provoked from my memories of reading this book earlier this year. I really really loved this collection of letters and I highly recommend it. Now for this Advent reflection, which does not really go into why I loved this book at all, but it's the only thing I wrote in reference to this book and I know I won't have anytime to write anything else within the next month or so...

I personally love contemplating apocalyptic themes during Advent, though I know many Christians who do not. I wanted to propose some writing that may potentially help with that this Advent. I’m thinking of “Rehearsals for Living” by Leanne Simpson and Robyn Maynard, and especially Part 1 of this book, “On Letter Writing, Commune, and the End of (This) World.” I want to share two excerpts from the book, the first from a letter by Robyn Maynard to Leanne Simpson:

“I am writing to you a letter at the end of (this) world… our respective communities—that is, Black and Indigenous communities—are collectively positioned on the very forefront of the unfolding catastrophe. It would require a deliberate obfuscation to view the racially uneven distribution of harms that the climate collapse engenders as accidental. …the reality is that not only are an array of world-endings already before us: they have already arrived. Our respective communities have borne, already, multiple apocalypses that were inflicted upon us, if un-identically, from the “barbarity time” of genocide/slavery/settler colonialism. The apocalypse is imagined, after all, in most classic Euro-Western settler tropes, in terms of the lack of clean drinking water, the destruction of the places “we” (they) live, the poisoning of the earth, inhumane and restrictive responses to people left hungry, displaced, in desperation: this is a condition that is already deeply familiar to our kin across Turtle Island and globally. You wrote about this in Dancing On Our Turtle’s Back: “By 1822—when many Nishnaabeg in the north and the west were still living as they always had—we were facing the complete political, cultural, and social collapse of everything we had ever known. My ancestors resisted and survived what must have seemed like an apocalyptic reality of occupation and subjugation in a context where they had few choices.” To remix Public Enemy, “Armageddon-been-in-effect”: it is the apocalypses of slavery and settler colonialism that bind our collective pasts and presents together in the calamity at hand… Today, the racially uneven environmental catastrophes of the present are inextricably connected to the unfinished catastrophes of 1492—the two genocides at the heart of the Americas, to paraphrase M. NourbeSe Philip, when a death-making commitment to extraction and dispossession took hold on a global scale.”

The second excerpt is a letter by Leanne Simpson to Robyn Maynard:

“All world-endings are not tragic. There are some world-endings that I am comfortable with. I frame the present epoch as “late capitalism” as a kind of aspirational descriptor more than as a strictly Marxist category. In order to make earthly planetary survival possible, some versions of this world need to end (and indeed, should never have begun in the first instance). Some worlds, after all, depended on the ongoing violent, always racial- and gender-differentiated foreclosures of other worlds. While I am devastated and terrified by the IPCC predictions for the living things on this earth, to avoid the worst-case scenarios now predicted by global scientific consensus, it is necessary to have the courage to envision the end of this world, that is, the world that white supremacy built, to move toward futures that are premised on life rather than (human, ecological, animal, microbial) waste. This disruption is what Frantz Fanon was getting at when he wrote, in The Wretched of the Earth, that “decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder.” Disorder is not the same as chaos. It implies, instead, a radical rupture from the dominant order, which is, after all, murderous. A program of disorder implies, here, that we radically alter—and indeed breach entirely with—the current order of things and the global violences upon which this order relies.
I believe that world-ending and world-making can occur, are occurring, have always occurred, simultaneously. Given that racial and ecological violence are interwoven and inextricable from one another, more now than ever, Black and Indigenous communities—who are globally positioned as “first to die” within the climate crisis—are also on the front lines of world-making practices that threaten to overthrow the current (death-making) order of things. Put otherwise, our communities, quite literally the post-apocalyptic survivors of world-endings already, are best positioned to imagine what this may be. This, after all, is the radical promise (if as of yet unachieved) that was and is extended to us by the world-making projects of abolition and decolonization.”

I think about both the world-ending and attendant world-making that Simpson talks about here, in relation to their title’s use of the word “rehearsal.” Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes the letters in this book as:

“a constantly unfolding drama, whose lines and characters and spaces remain thrillingly unfixed, underlying “life in rehearsal.” Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson embody and express how practice makes different. ”

I am reminded here of the last little fragmentary story in Kafka’s novel Amerika, about Karl trying to join the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. It opens:

“At a street corner Karl saw a placard with the following announcement: The Oklahoma Theatre will engage members for its company today at Clayton race-course from six o’clock in the morning until midnight. The great Theatre of Oklahoma calls you! Today only and never again! If you miss your chance now you miss it forever! If you think of your future you are one of us! Everyone is welcome! If you want to be an artist, join our company! Our Theatre can find employment for everyone, a place for everyone! If you decide on an engagement we congratulate you here and now! But hurry, so that you get in before midnight! At twelve o’clock the doors will be shut and never opened again. Down with all those who do not believe in us! Up, and to Clayton!”

I cannot help see the race course as both a banal and dreary American landscape that inevitably is the sort of place a travelling circus trope would perform, but also a certain nod to something like Pascal’s wager, with undeniable allusions to belief and faith in the placard’s wording (Walter Benjamin discusses this far more articulately in his essay on Kafka compiled in Illuminations). We find the protagonist Karl going to the race track to see if he can join the theatre company, and get this strange comical description of a quasi-eschatological spectacle:

“When he got out at Clayton he heard at once the noise of many trumpets. It was a confused blaring; the trumpets were not in harmony but were blown regardless of each other. Still, that did not worry Karl; he took it rather as a confirmation of the fact that the Theatre of Oklahoma was a great undertaking. But when he emerged from the station and surveyed the lay-out before him, he realized that it was all on a much larger scale than he could have conceived possible, and he did not understand how any organization could make such extensive preparations merely for the purpose of taking on employees. Before the entrance to the race-course a long low platform had been set up, on which hundreds of women dressed as angels in white robes with great wings on their shoulders were blowing on long trumpets that glittered like gold. They were no actually standing on the platform, but were mounted o separate pedestals, which could not however be seen, since they were completely hidden by the long flowing drapery of the robes. Now, as the pedestals were very high, some of them quite six feet high, these women looked gigantic, except that the smallness of their heads spoiled a little the impression of size and their loose hair looked too short and almost absurdly hanging between the great wings and framing the faces.”

I love how Kafka, like the story of Advent, completely sucks dry any anticipated romanticism from the narrative. Perhaps removed from the beautiful “rehearsals” that Simpson and Maynard write about, and far from the Messianic imagination of the Jewish people in the time of Jesus, the Messiah that Christians claim came in such an underwhelming fashion. What to make of it I do not know. As Tish Harrison Warren says (almost as if a Brechtian dramatist):

“Through the liturgical calendar we don’t merely retell the story of the gospel; we enter it. In this way the church calendar is like immersive theater. In immersive theater, no one is simply a spectator watching a play. The distinction between actors and audience is broken down and everyone becomes a character in the story.”

Sometimes when we speak of “immersive theatre” and “rehearsals for living” it sounds beautiful and exciting, and it certainly can be. But what I appreciate about Kafka’s prefigurative imaginings is that these rehearsals can also be strange, awkward, banal, frustrating, ambiguous and confusing, full of contradictions and sometimes arrive even with a little helping of comedy. As Walter Benjamin writes of Kafka’s Nature Theatre of Oklahoma:

“Kafka's world is a world theater. For him, [humanity] is on the stage from the very beginning. The proof of the pudding is the fact that everyone is accepted by the Nature Theater of Oklahoma. What the standards for admission are cannot be determined. Dramatic talent, the most obvious criterion, seems to be of no importance. But this can be expressed in another way: all that is expected of the applicants is the ability to play themselves. It is no longer within the realm of possibility that they could, if necessary, be what they claim to be… For all of them this place is the last refuge, which does not preclude it from being their salvation. Salvation is not a premium on existence, but the last way out for a [human] whose path; as Kafka puts it, is "blocked... by his own frontal bone."

[Max Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is such a beautiful exchange between two brilliant activist-scholars. The exchange demonstrates humility, care, and intimacy it is an honor to participate, to catch a glimpse of some visions and practices of worldmaking, through reading this book, and for that I am grateful.
Maynard and Simpson are able to weave the crises and rebellions of the year when this exchange took place into a larger decolonial and abolitionist imagination for the world. They offer ultimately a call to action. The action of stepping through the portal and remaking the world differently. These exchanges embody all the grief, rage and at times hope which that year (2020), but other years, most years as well, manifested.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A central point of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s marvellous As We Have Always Done is the notion of struggle based on what she calls ‘constellations of coresistance’. It’s a rich and powerful notion, one that gets beyond the crude simplicities of allyship, with its implications of generously given support but very little recognition of the multiplicities of struggle and aspects of struggles or the differences between allies. The notion of co-resistance invokes a very difference sense of the reason for being in the struggle, where ‘allies’ may have overlapping but also autonomous interests, while the idea of constellation gives them a sense of unity. It’s a rich metaphor, an enticing vision of comradeship, and a challenging practice.

This equally impressive six-part exploration grapples with what those constellations might look like and how the terms of co-resistance might be developed. In it, Simpson – a leading voice in Turtle Island’s Indigenous struggles – and Robyn Maynard – a powerful activist-analyst voice in Black struggles in the lands we call Canada – lay out a discussion that mediates, circles, muses on, and gives form to such a constellation. While it is clear that there is a rich friendship woven into the text, and a close comradeliness, the circumstances of its composition and its form also impose a sense of distance. Written during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and Canada’s approach to public health the centred on the maintenance of distance, Maynard and Simpson resort to letter writing.

This epistolary form gives the book both a slightly archaic feel as well as sense of intimacy – we are reading their letters, texts that include asides, personal reminiscences, family stories and moments, and self-reflection as well as, in the midst of ‘lockdowns’ and amid comments on the struggle, references to well-being, mental health, community and individual isolation and frustration, and more. There is, in this, an ambiguous sense of reading over their shoulders, while also recognising that this sense of the personal and the intimacy that flows from it is likely to be part of those constellations.

Along the way they explore engagements and relationships with the land, the commonalities and difference of racialized violence in their past and present worlds, the experience and powerfulness of spending time in the company of others-in-struggle and the importance of being in their ways of being, and each other’s different modes of engagement with the other’s communities’ key moments of struggle and resistance. In places there are frank admissions of uncertainty about how to engage alongside rich reflections on space and place making in those moments and the structures and networks that they spawn.

Crucially, this is not an attempt to be prescriptive but to openly and honestly explore options, to tell stories about ways of being, to consider ways to work around and beyond the Nation/State as a site of solution, and to pick away at the politics and relations of care and generosity in those constellations that seem so appealing. Importantly, it is not just a generosity and care for each other that Simpson and Maynard evoke, but a transformative politics of root and branch (that is, radical) change that considers those constellations of coresistance as shaped as much by care as the conflict that struggle necessarily evokes.

Framed by contributions from Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Robin D G Kelly, and mediating the tension between hope and discipline that shapes nearly every site of political struggle, this dialogue is a beautiful and beguiling exploration of the politics of politics, of survivance in the quest for survival, and of the fundamentals of comradeship. That makes it essential reading for these times.

[Alexa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was everything I needed to read at this exact moment. Reading the exchanges between Maynard and Simpson was such a gift. Would 100% recommend.

[Saskia Tholen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rehearsals for Living captures the spirit of the moment in which it was written—the anxiety and roiling anger of the pandemic shutdown/BLM summer 2020—while also carefully contextualizing that moment within the long, overlapping histories of destruction, revolution, and resurgence that have made this continent and this country what they are. It deconstructs the sense of unprecedented-ness that so dominated the public imagination that summer. I was moved by the insistent tenderness with which both authors treat their subject matter and the vulnerability they both show—tenderness without sentimentality and vulnerability that is anything but naïve. It's an openness to the world that feels like a disciplined practice, like a hard choice that you wake up and make every single day. It's the practice of an organizer, or of an artist, or of a parent. There are also a few reflections in here that hit hard for me, especially the bits focused on the climate crisis, like Maynard's critique of the concept of the Anthropocene close to the beginning. Even the title itself is so powerful: the idea that in spite of it all there are pockets of life in rehearsal, rooted in relationships of mutual care, which prefigure forms of social organization that would affirm life instead of destroying it. The rehearsal is the act itself—is living.

I think the book's structure took away from the experience for me. I wanted either more organization and analytical rigour—for the book to read more like a collection of essays—or less—for it to more fully embrace the organic narrative/correspondence form. It's trying to be many things—historical analysis, storytelling, personal reflection, and manifesto, woven together with anecdotes to add levity—and I'm not sure these came together as effectively as they might have. The book also leans heavily into tendencies of contemporary leftist writing that irk me, especially the sweeping dismissal of efforts for change that don't completely break with all systems and institutions (which obliterates nuance and can come off as self-righteous), and the tedious overuse of quasi-academic speak to the point where the terms become meaningless (we all just need to stop saying "worldmaking"...). I had several moments while reading where I had to remind myself how much I like the idea of this book, because the writing itself wasn't doing it for me.

In any case, I'm very glad I read this! Thank you, Bohmee, for the reminder that this world we're living in could and must be different, and that "the portal was there all along." I believe in the portal when I'm with you!

[Amanda Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

A series of letters written between a black activist and an indigenous activist, who are unable to meet in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I've read a lot of books about activist issues. I think they're important, and teach me to question myself and our collective culture, and fight for change. These books are not easy, fun, or enjoyable to read. They're hard. Really hard. They present uncomfortable truths, force you to challenge ingrained assumptions, and present you with startling stories and statistics. This book falls in that category.

Unfortunately, I found this book even more challenging than most books in this category. You would think it would be more relatable and engaging, since it's a series of letters, but I found the opposite to be true. It was very dry, and reads like a literature review, using academic words that nobody I know uses in real life (for example - quotidien, pedagogical, obfuscation, historiography, etc.).

The pace is slow, and I had to take out the book from the library twice to make it through the whole thing. It's a bit like reading a calculus text book. Not enjoyable, lots of struggles, important lessons, you want to put it down but then you'll fail the class.

In summary, I found this book totally exhausting to read. Maybe that's the point?

[Sarah Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible. Maynard and Betasamosake Simpson's epistolary exchange began at the heart of the pandemic, when they stakes were so obvious to everyone else. And yet, they reach back to the centuries of destruction of land and of people to tell us where this comes from, that it is not new. They rightly note that this is not an anthropocene that is uniquely destructive but instead a racial capitalism that has sought to destroy.

[Calyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book for one of my classes, and I absolutely loved it. The letters between Robin and Leanne are so personal and yet speak to broader issues, exploring themes of anti-capitalism, racism, abolition, etc. Truly a phenomenal work, and probably one I’ll read again

[Christianne Wilhelmson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The power of this book could have been so much more but I found it was undermined by the structure. This is essentially 2 books of essays merged together through a thin structure of exchanging letters. These don't read like letters at all so I found the two different styles of writing to be jarring and it got in the way of the ideas being shared.

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading

[Miki]

Rehearsals for Living is an epistolary novel in which Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson exchange letters (not emails) to one another during the Covid-19 pandemic. The topical matter of the letters ranges from what they're doing to support movements which aim to dismantle patriarchal, colonial settler systems in Canada that continue to endanger and kill black and Indigenous peoples to gardening.

I've read Policing Black Lives by Maynard and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Betasamosake Simpson and both are fantastic as they offer insight to the hostile and racist realities of white Canadian culture.

I admit that a now dated Covid statement that Maynard makes initially put me off. I think that this inclusion has been the case in a lot of nonfiction that I've been reading recently and wish that writers would hold off on making sweeping generalizations and refrain from including outdated information until we better understand the situation. Especially since Canada and the US refuse to even acknowledge new research published in Europe and Asia. But I digress. I also recognize that this is a "me" issue. Back to the book!

Interestingly, the writers use the pandemic to frame their correspondence and focus instead on their reactions to how the pandemic has affected their work and how, especially in Canada, the opioid crisis has killed so many more Canadians due to lockdowns and the inability to access vital care and support. They both also highlight that, unsurprisingly, Covid, lockdowns, etc. hurt black and indigenous populations more than others. Although this wasn't new news to me, I was so thankful that the writers were pointing this out. My only criticism is that I know someone out there reading this will have wanted the stats to back up the writers' points, so I hope that there are footnotes in the physical copy of the book.

I enjoyed listening to the dialogue between Maynard and Betasamosake Simpson. I learned new things about the histories of both black and Indigenous groups and wished I could have joined the conversation! Listening to this on audio was a great idea (Maynard narrates), and it reminded me how much I want to reread both Policing Black Lives by Maynard and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Betasamosake Simpson!

If you're a fan of nonfiction, epistolary novels, Canadian sociopolitical and cultural issues, or like either or both of the authors, then I highly recommend that you pick up this text. I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy Rehearsals for Living (we all know that I can't stand memoirs, personal essays, and autobiographies), but I'm glad that I read it because I definitely did!

[Audiobook, borrowed from library]

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rehearsals for Living is structured as a series of letters exchanged by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Robyn Maynard. The focus of much of their discussion is the relationship between Black liberation and struggles against anti-Blackness with decolonization and Land Back; it is such a thoughtful, thought-provoking consideration of the ways that these struggles are intertwined on both more theoretical and very practical (as in, who’s showing up at which protests) senses. It is also a personal, intimate exchange in which they discuss their families, their home lives, and their personal struggles, putting into practice the relationality and community building they discuss. 100% wholeheartedly recommend.

I purchased this book a few years ago (2022) and I don’t know why it sat on my e-reader waiting for me as long as it did. Given the context of it being written during the stay-at-home period of the pandemic, I do wish I’d read it sooner. This said, it absolutely remains relevant.

I read this book having read solo-authored texts by both authors previously. This context was helpful, but is absolutely not required (that said, I do recommend reading both!).

Content warnings: discussions of racism, racial slurs, police brutality, colonialism, genocide, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, COVID pandemic

[Rachel Ashera Rosen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Two of the most brilliant minds of our time, and they write letters to each other" is a criminally underrated format for a book, imo. Fortunately this one exists. During the lockdown, Maynard and Simpson begin a dialogue about Black and Indigenous struggles for justice, abolition, the climate crisis, police brutality, and decolonization. It's a luminous, righteously angry, loving work tackling the big question: "How do we live?"

I may need to buy myself a copy—there are just too many pieces of wisdom in this that I can see myself needing to revisit. It's not an easy or comfortable read, and I had to push down the reflexive "but but but" that I think every settler-Canadian experiences, but that's the point, isn't it? It shouldn't be comfortable or easy. It is a clarion call that the colonial project can not be tweaked or salvage but that a new world needs to be built.

[jing | aperipateticbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

★★★★☆ (4)

important for the everyday citizen for a deeper than average exploration of Black and Indigenous struggles on Turtle Island and the need for collective liberation, especially since the onset of COVID. on a personal level, however, their dialogue didn't add much to my own pool of knowledge gathered from GRSJ classes these past two years—the essays I've read from Maynard's and Simpson's individual collections have had far more impact on my learning.

also, audiobook-wise, there's power in hearing the voices of these phenomenal activists read aloud their own writing, but because there are constraints (as opposed to them giving a speech at an event) that audiobook narrators know how to navigate, it really made me appreciate how much of a difference one's skill in their profession can provide.

nevertheless, an important read, and just a rehearsal as indicative of the title; I would encourage you to progress onto the authors' other books for further insight into potentials for Black and Indigenous futurity.

[Risa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25+ stars

This book is exactly what the description says: a cohesive, powerful exchange of letters and ideas between two influential and significant literary and cultural figures. I’ll probably need to revisit some sections in more depth in the future, but it will definitely be a text I recommend for students in Indigenous Studies courses as well as any who are interested in social justice issues and social reform. I’m glad this book exists and that I was able to read a copy.

An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Isobel · Rating 5 out of 5]

not shockingly, given how much I value the other work that I’ve read by both of these authors, I really enjoyed their collaboration! it was really cool to see them think things through together through this series of letters

[Kab · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Carla Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives me hope.

[Ines Pahaut · Rating 4 out of 5]

On racial violence, racial capitalism & intersectionality

[Saraa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and compelling N's thought stories.