Mind the Truth
I write to you consumed by worry. I want to celebrate the beautiful stories in this issue, with their fairies and saints, their quests and luminescent LGBTQ+ love stories—and you should relish in each of those tales; there’s so much here to get deliciously lost in—but there is also acid in my stomach, and there are looming threats to contend with.
We know that the protections of the First Amendment are essential to the good work that writers, illustrators, publishers, librarians, and booksellers do, and so there’s an existential element to my concerns: a comedian and a journalist have just been fired, their work undone by those with a thirst for blind retribution; more silencings are promised. What can our industries expect in the days, weeks, and months ahead?
We do this work fed by the keen belief that every story is part of the larger truth—that each is precious, that each must be protected and shared. Each silenced voice, then, represents some truth lost. We cannot hope to grasp the full picture with lights snuffed out all around us.
My encouragement that you pore over these 100+ titles to identify the selections that your readers and communities need most is no less enthusiastic and hopeful for this: my compulsion to highlight one title in particular this issue, and to encourage you to consume it with an eye toward understanding what we’re facing.
In Furious Minds, Laura K. Field asserts that autocracy relies on a “destabilizing approach to truth and reality.” Her book is a revelatory, at times horrifying deconstruction of the New Right; it shows how we arrived at this moment, and it discusses the intentions of those who hope to push it further. Understanding their intellectual underpinnings is crucial to organizing an effective response, Field knows. We recommend her book for the essential knowledge it contains—and for its important advice: “keep engaging and pushing back however [you] can, and as [your] circumstances allow—in protests, civil actions, and lawsuits, running for election at every level, and putting pressure on Congress to restore their own authority in our constitutional order.”
Read in power, friends. Keep threatening ignorance with every page you turn and title you recommend.
Sincerely,
Michelle Anne Schingler
Editor in Chief
mschingler@forewordreviews.com
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Michelle Anne Schingler
