The Emotions of Nonviolence:

Revisiting Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’

Available March 28, 2025 at Oxford University Press, Amazon USA, and Amazon Canada. Audiobook available for pre-order at Audible and here.

There is perhaps no piece by Martin Luther King, Jr. that is more widely read or more beloved than the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Countless articles and books have been written about its generation and meaning. Despite this, its broader philosophical significance has for the large part been missed. The Emotions of Nonviolence offers a novel interpretation of the Letter: it is not merely a discussion of civil disobedience – as is usually thought – but is also and perhaps even primarily an essay on political motivation. On this reading, the Letter seeks to answer a central question in democratic theory: namely, how can and ought we motivate the racially oppressed to engage in civil disobedience – in what King called nonviolent direct action? King’s answer is that we must appeal to and encourage the political emotions, both positive and negative. Fear, courage, faith, dignity, indignation, and love can together motivate nonviolent action and nonviolent action can reciprocally motivate, channel, and sustain these same emotions. It is through this continuous loop that nonviolence has the potential to transform society and its structures.

Grace Lee Boggs:

A Revolutionary Life

Forthcoming Bold Type Books

Grace Lee Boggs spent more than seventy years at the heart of revolutionary struggle in Detroit. A philosopher and activist who shaped radical movements from the 1940s through the 2010s, she developed a visionary politics that insisted revolution wasn’t just about tearing down unjust systems—it was about transforming ourselves and building new ways of living together. Yet despite her profound influence on twentieth-century radical thought, no full biography of her has ever been written—until now.

Grace Lee Boggs: A Revolutionary Life recovers the remarkable story of this visionary thinker through an innovative approach that blends rigorous scholarship with imaginative reconstruction and pilgrimage. Following Grace’s journey from her birth above her father’s restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, through her philosophical training at Barnard and Bryn Mawr, to her decades of organizing in Detroit alongside her husband James Boggs, this biography traces how her revolutionary philosophy grew from lived experience—her early encounters with exclusion, her immersion in Detroit’s Black freedom struggle, her collaborations with figures like C.L.R. James and Malcolm X, and her deep conviction that imagination and creativity are themselves political acts.

Drawing on archival research, oral histories, and conversations with scholars and activists carrying forward her legacy, the book employs creative methods to tell her story: retracing her footsteps through the cities that shaped her, reconstructing key scenes from her political life, and using recovery itself as method. In keeping with Grace’s own belief that revolution requires visionary thinking, this biography makes visible what archives have erased and centers voices that have been marginalized in previous accounts of her work.

The result is not just a life story but a rigorous exploration of Grace’s philosophical vision—her theory of revolution as evolution, her synthesis of Black radical thought with nonviolent transformation, her insistence that we must grow our souls while we change our institutions. At a moment when we face interconnected crises of democracy, climate, and justice, Grace’s ideas about love, community, and transformation offer a blueprint for building the world we need.