This is an incomplete inventory the array of causes with which she has aligned herself is dizzying. She has spent her days honoring the victims of hate crimes, fighting for prison reform, protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the injustices of Guantánamo Bay, exposing police brutality and racial profiling, advocating for immigrants’ rights, and campaigning for Barack Obama (whose administration later disappointed her). Read our latest issue or browse back issues. These disparate threads are fused together in her core identity and vocation: Kaur is an activist who has lent her presence, time, and voice to nearly every major progressive movement of the past 20 years. She is a filmmaker, a feminist, a writer, a speaker, and a mother. She is a survivor of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. She is a Yale-educated lawyer with a master’s degree in theology from Harvard Divinity School.

She is a Sikh whose family has farmed in California for more than 100 years.

Kaur has been formed by many experiences. It seems a small miracle that Valarie Kaur’s quiet yet commanding voice cut through the cacophony. I picked up See No Stranger at a time when these children and these elephants were trumpeting so loudly I could barely hear myself think. I am also hemmed in by a herd of elephants in the room: the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic racism, and the frayed state of American democracy, to name a few. These days I am surrounded by my children, who always seem to be home. When I settle into my cozy reading nook, I am never alone.

See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur