Books

Rebecca Solnit
No Straight Road Takes You There

In No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, Rebecca Solnit stresses that taking the long view of history is the only way to recognise lasting political change. Written over the past five years, this forceful essay collection probes current afflictions – the climate crisis, economic disparity and far-right extremism – to find strength in past successes that reach beyond our darkened world view.

Underscoring the power of “slowness, patience, endurance”, the activist and Men Explain Things to Me author reminds us how the Occupy movement – a global protest against income inequality and corporate corruption – loudly advocated for student loan forgiveness. Many thought it a radical idea then, but the Biden administration in 2023 attempted reforms to forgive student debt. The Australian Labor Party has introduced legislation to do the same.

Solnit muses on “aunthood”, a kinship where women sit outside the typical nuclear family but act as powerful conduits of support for those within it. These relationships represent a “resonant … framework for mutual aid”, such as a Californian sewing group that made face masks for vulnerable people during the pandemic. Elsewhere, Solnit surveys the wreckage of our times: the ruin Big Tech has wrought on cities such as San Francisco along with the noxious rise of alt-right politics to public discourse.

With unselfconscious prose and a penchant for antithesis – Harvey Weinstein was the “storyteller” who became the “storykiller” – Solnit persuasively urges us to pull back from our despairing daily realities to harness hope again. We must fight climate change and economic inequality despite the setbacks, she argues, because recognising roadblocks is essential to making enduring change. “The past tells many stories,” she writes, “and always points to one story – that change is constant, for the better, for the worse.”

Her observations are often piercing. She describes oil-drilling and fracking as selfish deeds emblematic of “shallow time”. Instead of respecting “deep time” – the ongoing need to preserve the planet’s ecosystem – we remain in greedy pursuit of quick “short-term profit” with “long-term wreckage”. Greenwashing, meanwhile, remains a rampant curse on climate activism and makes it “harder to recognise a false friend than an honest enemy”.

A cogent clarion call, No Straight Road Takes You There has a clear-eyed realism but is energised by its potent, quiet optimism. Solnit encourages us to take strength from the gains of feminism, environmental action and marriage equality. Each movement demonstrates the “circuitous route that change take[s]” and offers reassurance that hope shouldn’t be entirely abandoned.

Granta, 176pp, $36.99

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