What I want is another world. And when I say another world, I mean this one, toppled and reborn.
In a letter to her six-year-old daughter, Julietta Singh writes towards a new vision of the world, inspired by her child’s radical embrace of possibility as a model for how we might live. Central to this vision is the realisation that if we are to survive the looming political and ecological disasters, we must break from the conventions we have inherited and begin to orient ourselves towards more equitable and revolutionary paths.
With nuance and generosity, Singh reveals the connections among the crises humanity faces – climate catastrophe, extractive capitalism and the violent legacies of racism, patriarchy and colonialism – inviting us to move through the breaks toward a tenable future.
The Breaks is at once both a celebration of queer family-making, communal living and Brown girlhood and a profound meditation on race, inheritance and queer mothering at the end of the world. Luminous with love, fierce with determination, it is unafraid to face the greatest of universal challenges with answers emerging from a place of hope and tenderness.
‘Lithe, captivating . . . An honest and unassuming illustration of making thought public, of finding praxis in the quotidian — and daring to linger there.’ Los Angeles Review of Books
‘A gift for posterity.’ Brixton Review of Books
‘This is a stunning work.’ Publishers Weekly
‘The Breaks is amazing – I read the whole thing through in one sitting. It’s got the heft and staying power of Baldwin’s A Letter to My Nephew.’ Prof. Lauren Berlant
‘A remarkable book.’ Roma Tearne, author of Brixton Beach
‘A lens-shifting book… 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
‘If a book can be a hole cut in the side of an existence, in order to escape it . . . then this is that book.’ Bhanu Kapil