Nothing makes me bawl like a book in which characters fiercely look after one another. Maybe that’s because my dad bailed on us when we were little, never to return. Or maybe it’s because my mother… Nothing makes me bawl like a book in which characters fiercely look after one another. Or maybe, it’s because my mother was a hospice nurse, setting an example of caretaking in the hardest moment a family will face. Or maybe, it’s good old-fashioned co-dependence–some of us find our worth through being needed. Whatever the reason, I’ve been drawn to literature of radical care since my earliest reading days. My collection, The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There, is a series of linked essays that span twenty years. The essays speak to each other about connection, isolation, community building, seeing, and of course, care– as ingrained habit, as rebellion, as a quiet fuck you to abandonments. Living things need other living things to care for us and about us, but that doesn’t mean it always happens. Hanif Abduraquib says, “That anyone loves us at all is not a given.” We’re born alone and we die alone, this we all know. But in between we make thousands of daily choices about if we will give a damn and for whom and how: a rooster, a community, prisons, our kids, students, a neighbor. And from our caring stems our deepest failures and richest successes.
Hanif Abduraquib says, “That anyone loves us at all is not a given.”
Author, Jennifer Eli Bowen, explores themes of radical care through personal memory, literary analysis, and community-centric narratives. The core idea across her works is that care is both a practice and a political act—an intentional choice to respond to others’ needs even when systems fail or when abandonment looms. Through interconnected essays, Bowen links intimate caregiving to broader social commitments, challenging readers to consider how care can counter loneliness, isolation, and injustice.
“The essays speak to each other about connection, isolation, community building, seeing, and of course, care– as ingrained habit, as rebellion, as a quiet fuck you to abandonments.”
Résumé authorial (summary): Bowen’s radical care framework binds intimate caregiving to collective justice, arguing that sustained attention to loved ones and strangers alike builds resilient communities and resists abandonment.
More News
- Evans scores 19 in UC Irvine's 73-60 win over UC Riverside
- Elvish Yadav calls himself husband material, says he has a softer side too
- Elvish Yadav – Official Facebook Page Summary
- Ben Stokes' gritty 36 keeps England's Ashes hopes alive
- CSU Northridge vs. UC Irvine Women’s Basketball: Free Live Stream, TV Channel, How to Watch
- Ashes 2025-26 - Ben Stokes
- Sonam Bajwa Joins Elvish Yadav At ‘Aukaat Se Bahar’ Screening, Netizens Want Them Together In A Project
- Rida Tharana — Threads Profile
- Ben Stokes says England have been ‘letting the pressure get to us’ in Ashes
- Vandals Feast on Two Wins at UC Irvine Thanksgiving Classic