Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnitis an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including the environment, politics, place, and art. Solnit is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, where bi-monthly she writes the magazine's "Easy Chair" essay...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 June 1961
CountryUnited States of America
grateful thinking people
I don't think my work has to be loved by everyone, and it's loved by enough people that I'm grateful and able to keep going.
beautiful home new-orleans
What is kind of beautiful about Katrina is that even though the media and officials are working hard at telling us everyone in New Orleans was a monster, in the immediate aftermath more than 200,000 people invite displaced strangers into their homes through hurricanehousing.org and an uncounted horde go to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to give, to love, to be in solidarity, and to rebuild.
people ordinary influence
I was not going to surrender to the status quo and corporate insistence that ordinary people have no power and influence.
believe people creative
Anarchists believe that we can govern ourselves in the absence of coercive and centralized authority; the underlying premise about human nature (to use an infinitely problematized but necessary term here) is fundamentally positive. And the evidence that in disasters people are really pretty kind, generous, brave, resourceful and creative fed that.
understanding territory ends
I roam around a lot in my territory, but what I learn at one end inflects and opens up my understanding at the other.
growing-up book native-american
Growing up north of San Francisco, I immersed myself in the local landscape and in books about Native Americans, cowboys, and pioneers that seemed to ground me in it, but to pursue culture in those days meant being spun around until dizzy and then pushed east.
writing technology years
I've been gratified to see over the twenty or so years of my writing life the West become less of a colony of the East; maybe new technologies and too much travel undermine the idea of provinciality.
giving profound people
In the aftermath of 9/11, people had not a good time, but a deep, profound, rousing time, woke up from their ennui and isolation and trivialization to feel engaged, connected, purposeful, ready to give, to engage, to care, to learn.
natural disaster
There are disasters that are entirely manmade, but none that are entirely natural.
earthquakes cities interesting
For me the insurrectionary possibilities of disaster are what make them really interesting and sometimes positive - Mexico City's big 1985 earthquake brought a lot of positive, populist, anti-institutional social change.
latin america political
I'm a big fan of the vigor of civil society, political engagement, and public life in many parts of Latin America.
thinking media expectations
I think that fear of the mob, the expectation that people, particularly poor and nonwhite people become mobs almost automatically in the absence of coercive authority, is inculcated by the media, the movies, and politicians.
heart want disagree
A contrarian at heart, I am often guided by what I disagree with and don't want.
meaningful fun needs
We have only the language for fun and miserable, and maybe we need language for deep and shallow, meaningful and meaningless.