Ruha Benjamin reminds us that in our collective imaginations we already have everything we need to make the world we want to live in. Imagination is a lovely volume with a meditation on the power of being human: we can dream, if we only believe that we can.--Tressie McMillan Cottom, author of Thick: And Other Essays

Only Ruha Benjamin could have written this gift of a book. Science and technology's most astute social critic, she knows the power of imagination--the incubator of breathtaking beauty and the atomic bomb. Bold, brilliant, and visionary, Benjamin's manifesto asks us to wage love, to imagine an abolitionist, compassionate, just world against the venal dreams of warmongers and billionaires. An essential weapon in our struggle to save life.--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Benjamin's roving narrative moves nimbly between topics to make her case (at one exemplary point she pauses her analysis of a documentary on creative writing programs for prisoners to note how it reminds her of a line from Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go: 'Could a creature without a human spirit create such heart-wrenching paintings?'). It's a potent exhortation for society to point its dreams toward the collective good.-- "Publishers Weekly"

Benjamin invites readers to consider a different world, one that the imagination of others tells us is the best of all possible worlds...A provocative manifesto indeed, and one that deserves a wide audience.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

A short, punchy book designed to kick-start expansive thinking about society's most pressing collective problems. . . In the tradition of the best manifestos, Benjamin encourages readers to think through seemingly audacious suggestions.-- "Science Magazine"

Benjamin makes the case for imagination being a core tool to revolutionary work without getting too lost in the clouds. . . In tones that transport the reader back to sentiments of the wide-eyed openness to possibility "the student" often occupies Imagination's brevity and makes it clear that it is an activation point. Start here, and then go about the work of imagining the world anew.--Arimeta Diop "Vanity Fair"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2024-02-06

Length: 192 pages