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THE LIGHT WE GIVE

HOW SIKH WISDOM CAN TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE

A worthwhile and readable introduction to Sikhi and a strong testament to peaceful living.

Lessons from the Sikh faith.

Singh provides an accessible work that combines personal testimony of a fascinating and little-understood ethnic and religious minority in America and an introduction to the teachings of Sikhi (the author uses the Punjabi noun as opposed to the colonialized Sikhism). Singh’s life story—and the history of the Sikh community—has been shaped by misunderstanding, racism, and violence. The author recounts a shocking array of racial confrontations with people on public streets, in schools, in airports, and elsewhere. He chronicles the Sikh struggle through numerous periods of oppression and mass murder in India as well as incidents in the U.S., including the post–9/11 murder of a Sikh man and the 2012 massacre of a Sikh congregation in 2012. “They didn’t have to forgive the man who’d tormented them, but they didn’t have to internalize his hate either,” writes Singh. “Rather than calling for blood or revenge, they shared with the world a core Sikh teaching: “No fear, No hate (Nirbhau, Nirvair).” This concept—to “fight hate with love”—has helped the author deal with his own anger. He points to three major components of his faith that shaped his positivity: “chardi kala,” a teaching that imbues life with optimism and gratitude even amid pain and suffering; “ik oankar,” the concept that all people are divine, or have a light of divinity within them, making all people equal and worthy of respect; and “seva,” the practice of expressing love in all things, especially through service. “With each selfless act,” writes Singh, “we become slightly less selfish; with each loving action, we become slightly more loving.” The author calls on readers to seek a life of active empathy, seeing each person, even those who are hurtful, as valuable and worthy of kindness and love.

A worthwhile and readable introduction to Sikhi and a strong testament to peaceful living.

Pub Date: July 19, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-593-08797-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022

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THINK YOU'LL BE HAPPY

MOVING THROUGH GRIEF WITH GRIT, GRACE, AND GRATITUDE

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.

“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023

ISBN: 9780063304413

Page Count: 288

Publisher: HarperOne

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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