Rebecca Solnit on Approaching These Times with Hope, Imagination and Perseverance

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In her new book of essays, “No Straight Road Takes You There,” writer and activist Rebecca Solnit urges us to not give in to feelings of doom and complacency in threatening political times, but instead to imagine a radically better future. “The most important territory to take is in the imagination,” she writes. “Once you create a new idea of what is possible and acceptable, the seeds are planted; once it becomes what the majority believes, you’ve created the conditions in which winning happens.” We talk to Solnit about her essays and the importance of persevering, even when it doesn’t feel good. Guests: Rebecca Solnit, writer, historian and activist; author, "No Straight Road Takes You There" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KQBD Podcasts comes from Earth Justice. As a national legal nonprofit,
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1:18.1	Rebecca Solnit is basically a lifelong San Franciscan.
1:21.9	She's one of our best cultural exports known around the world as a leading activist voice in global culture.
1:28.9	She has a new anthology of her essays out. No Straight Road takes you there,
1:33.3	which is an excellent short and snappy survey of her prose, politics, and preoccupations.
1:39.0	There is thinking about the climate and the long view of feminism, but there is also an
1:43.6	insistence on meandering, on storytelling, and this long view of feminism, but there is also an insistence on meandering on storytelling
1:46.0	and this rugged discipline of staying in the fight despite the uncertainty of the world.
1:51.7	She's coming up next right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. There are many places to start a conversation with Rebecca
2:12.5	Solman about her new book, No Straight Road Takes You There, which anthologizes some of her recent essays.
2:19.7	There's protests and resistance to warmongering, climate activism, men explaining things,
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