Instead, the path to change twists and turns, with many defeats as well as small victories. In addition, she emphasizes that no easy cause-and-effect relationship exists between activism and seeing changes realized. Solnit seeks to safeguard against the cultural amnesia in which people forget that previously unthinkable events changed history, such as obtaining suffrage for women after millennia of patriarchy. Solnit advocates instead embracing the darkness of an uncertain future and campaigning from the perspective that previously unforeseen changes are always possible. Bush, during the Iraq War, which occurred despite the worldwide protest of millions on Februand caused many activists to succumb to a paralyzing state of despair and go home. The book was written in the aftermath of the 2004 reelection of George W. Solnit’s book is a manifesto for hope in place of the despair that engulfs many activists when their campaigns to make the world a better place or safeguard local values from globalized corporations do not bear immediate fruit. The foreword for this edition doesn’t include page numbers, so citations from the foreword reference an e-book location number instead. This study guide uses the Kindle e-book edition published by Canongate Books in 2016. The resurgent popularity of Solnit’s book proves her own argument in Hope in the Dark that writing is an “act of faith” (64) because writers can’t be sure of how and when their words will land. The book gained renewed popularity after the 2016 election of Donald Trump when New York Times journalist Alice Gregory linked to a download of the book on Facebook. In 2005, Guardian reviewer and Green Party leader Caroline Lucas praised Hope in the Dark for helping remind people of the good that activism can achieve but criticized Solnit’s scholastic rigor.
The original 2004 edition had modest critical success.
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