Written in the aftermath of the 2016 United States election, Radical Hope gathers thirty-one letters from novelists, poets, essayists and organisers attempting to think politically without surrendering either intimacy or imagination.

Its contributors include Alicia Garza, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Celeste Ng, Junot Díaz, Mona Eltahawy, Hari Kunzru, Jewelle Gomez, Claire Messud and Cherríe Moraga. The letters are addressed not to an abstract public but to ancestors, children, strangers, artists and communities: people through whom history becomes personal and political commitment becomes something more substantial than a slogan. 

De Robertis organises the collection into “Roots,” “Branches” and “Seeds”: inherited histories, present struggles and futures not yet settled. The epistolary form matters. Following the tradition of James Baldwin’s letter-essays, these pieces can move between argument and confession without pretending the two belong to separate worlds. They consider racism, migration, gender, queer life, Indigenous survival, artistic responsibility and the emotional labour of remaining politically awake when public life appears engineered to produce exhaustion.

Some contributions are sharper than others—the unavoidable weather system of a large anthology—but collectively the book records a particular political moment while also asking the more durable question beneath it: how does dissent become a form of care rather than merely another expression of despair?

Virago first UK edition, 2017. Hardback with light edge and corner wear; clean internally.