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 was a Chinese American philosopher and activist who spent more than seventy years at the heart of revolutionary struggle in Detroit. Yet despite her deep influence on radical thought and action in the twentieth century, 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 blend of rigorous scholarship, imaginative reconstruction, and personal 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 refuses conventional forms.

Drawing on archival research, interviews with those who knew Grace, and conversations with Asian American scholars and activists carrying forward her legacy, the book traces how Grace’s revolutionary philosophy grew from lived experience—her encounters with racism as the only Chinese girl in her neighborhood, her immersion in Detroit’s Black freedom struggle, and her deep conviction that imagination and creativity are themselves political acts.

In keeping with Grace’s own belief that revolution requires visionary thinking, this biography employs creative methods to tell her story: retracing her footsteps through Providence, New York, and Detroit; reconstructing key scenes from her political life; and centering the voices of Asian Americans who have been too often erased from accounts of her work. The result is not just a life story but a meditation on how we recover what has been lost, how we honor those who crossed boundaries, and how Grace’s ideas about love, community, and transformation speak powerfully to our current moment of crisis and possibility.