Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning

By Alisse Waterston

Illustrated by Charlotte Corden

Published by University of Toronto Press 2020

The moment I completed this book, I wanted to give a rooftop shoutout to family, friends, colleagues, and anyone I knew, to not only read this inspirational work, but also to stock up on it as a holiday gift for  friends and family. Both the art and the writing speak to a wide public audience, including our children and grandchildren, as well as ourselves. All of our lives have been turned upside down by the dark times of contemporary politics and a world wide pandemic. This book helps shed the light that can help us navigate the scary, uncertain present and future.  

Alisse Waterston is a cultural anthropologist; the inspiration for the book was her own emotional and intellectual development as an anthropologist and an activist, but her search for meaning goes far beyond cultural anthropology, which she describes only briefly in terms of its relevance as a source of light in dark times. The book, part of the publisher’s ethnoGRAPHIC series, provides new perspectives  for people in a wide range of professions, situations and backgrounds, both in the United States and internationally. 

The book is a work of art as well as a narrative, enlivened by the charming sketches of the co-author, Charlotte Corden, and is rooted in an interdisciplinary intellectual immersion in historical and modern literature, philosophy, poetry, and social science. Waterston’s fictional and nonfictional encounters are focused on the widespread current political, economic and humanitarian crises. What is most important to the authors is the need to unmask the political lying, particularly regarding deep and widespread economic inequality, which they see as the source of so much individual and community suffering throughout the world. Lifting the curtain on the source of this inequality and suffering means penetrating the difference between truth and lies, unmasking the delusions that affect all of us as individuals,  and “lifting the wool” from our own eyes, in order to begin the critical journey into envisioning an alternative world of light in order to penetrate these dark times.

The “stories” the authors tell draw upon the work of well known writers and activists, such as Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist, the German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the feminist writer Vivian Gornick, the American activist lawyer Brian Stevenson and other less well known public intellectuals, all of whom have engaged in lighting up dark times in their own work. In trying to answer the question of how we all, as individuals, no matter what our status or personal situation, can contribute to lighting up dark times, the authors inspire us to examine the “moving parts of power” and how to oppose it, through not just reason, but through deep thinking and internal dialogue.

We can begin by attaching ourselves to people who are different and immersing ourselves in their worlds, a central proposition of cultural anthropology. Making new connections with others increases our empathy, broadens our perspectives on the world and motivates us to ask ourselves the question “How do I want to be human?” To help us begin, the authors end their narrative with a discussion guide and drawing exercises, which can bring our dream of a better world closer to reality.