'Learning to mother at the end of the world is an infinite toggle between wanting to make you feel safe and needing you to know that the earth and its inhabitants are facing a catastrophic crisis.'
In The Breaks, Julietta Singh pens a luminous and moving letter to her six year-old daughter about race, climate change, and inheritance.
At school, Singh's daughter is learning about history, society and culture but at home she must learn to challenge and interrogate these stories. As Singh and her daughter discuss subjects as wide-ranging and interconnected as race, the legacies of colonialism, queer family-making, mass consumption and climate catastrophe, their conversations reveal how our survival depends on breaking with the stories we've been told, and reimagining the world for the better.
Working in the tradition of James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and bringing us right up to the present day, Singh presents an intimate and remarkable vision of present collapse and future possibility.
About the Author
Julietta Singh is Associate Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia. A writer and academic, she works at the intersections of postcolonial studies, feminist and queer theory, and the environmental humanities. She is the author of Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements and No Archive Will Restore You.
Industry Reviews
'Julietta Singh's meditation to her daughter is an immeasurable gift... With poignant, aching, beautiful, and deeply loving prose, Singh brings Brown girls into the sun, and makes you want to change the ways of the world for our young people and for us all.'
Imani Perry, author of Breathe
