How did you wind up writing a book about the history of nonviolence?

In 2018, I published a book that I co-wrote with Susan Zimet, Roses & Radicals: The Epic Story of How American Women Won the Right to Vote. Writing this book was a new experience for me. It required blending two very different activities: extensive research into the history of the suffrage movement (about which I knew next to nothing before I started) and thoughtful narration of this story for younger readers. I loved learning about this history, figuring out how to recreate the drama of this struggle, and finding an accessible voice capable of capturing the complexity and profundity of the suffrage movement.

I also found that spending lots of time and energy trying to do justice to the inspiring stories of women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Alice Paul was time and energy very well spent. I never much thought of myself as a person who needed to have heroes, but I couldn’t help but look up to these women (however much they all had their flaws). Delving deep into their stories made me believe that great, necessary change is possible.

When I finished Roses & Radicals, I knew I wanted to write another book of history for younger readers. I spent many months searching for a worthy topic. I talked to my agent, my family, my friends, really anyone who would listen. Eventually, in a café in Tel Aviv, my friend, the Israeli writer Maya Savir, asked, “What about nonviolence?”

As was the case with the suffrage movement, I didn’t really know much about nonviolence. About as much as the average person. A little about Gandhi, a little more about MLK, but that was it. Still, I was intrigued, so I ran the topic by my agent, Dan Lazar, and, amazingly, he didn’t shoot it down right away (one sign of a good agent: they’re honest and have very good instincts). So I started reading, just to get my bearings on the subject and see if there might be a book there.

The more I read about nonviolence and its history, the more I grew fascinated with the topic, and the more I wanted to write about it. I realized, somewhat retrospectively, that the final decade of the women’s suffrage struggle was a true nonviolent campaign, and I wanted to retell Alice Paul’s story from that perspective. Also, I learned that though there are plenty of books about Gandhi, the civil rights movement, Nelson Mandela, etc., almost no books for young readers on the topic as a whole exist. I knew this was the right book for me.

Did the current political situation inform your decision to write We Are Power or influence your experience of actually working on it?

Without question. I definitely have an ironic, even cynical streak in me, something that I think you can detect pretty clearly in my first couple of books. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that it’s necessary for me to find ways to be hopeful, and to find people, things, and causes I can believe in unironically.

It is easy, and perhaps understandable, to respond to events in the US since the 2016 election with anger, cynicism, resignation, and even despair. I have certainly felt all those things and more. But I didn’t want to feed those things. I wanted instead to find stories to tell that would give not just others hope, but me as well.

As I worked on the book, I came to see that power is more complicated than we typically believe. The President and other elected officials certainly have more direct access to channels of power than we do, but regular people—if they’re willing to work together, if they’re able to organize, strategize, and commit to a real struggle—have incredible power as well. To be sure, we are facing plenty of challenges right now, but working on this book made me something of an optimist. When people tell me “it’s over” or “they won,” I completely disagree.

Who is this book for?

Officially, We Are Power is for young readers, 10-14 year-olds according to the back cover. But if you’re at all interested in this topic, your age doesn’t matter. I know from enough casual conversations with friends and relatives that very few adults know much of this material, and I think all of us would be better off if our understanding of twentieth-century history included a better appreciation of the role nonviolent movements played in shaping it.

The fact is there aren’t that many great books on the history of nonviolent activism for a general audience, regardless of one’s age. I know, because I read stacks of books on the topic in order to write this one. There are plenty of great biographies or accounts of particular movements, but larger overviews that are well-written and accessible are few and far between. In this regard, I think my book fills a gap not just in terms of what’s available for kids, but for adults as well.

Did anything surprise you during the process of writing this book?

A couple of things, at least. First, I started writing this book in the summer of 2017. Of course, the climate movement already existed by then, but Greta Thunberg was just an anonymous, 14 year-old Swede at that time. I had a full draft of my book (one that included a completely different conclusion—about Parkland, March for our Lives, and an incredible high school group in Chicago called the Peace Warriors) before I first learned about her. As I worked on the book, I felt—even though it was officially about the past—that We Are Power had to communicate to its readers that all the truths about power and change described in its pages remain true today. I wanted my readers to feel like nonviolent activism is a way to take their frustrations and concerns about injustice and do something about them. But I never imagined that Thunberg would come along and inspire so many people.

The book’s conclusion now feels utterly natural and necessary. It’s clear to me that climate change is an enormous, terrifying challenge that we must confront, and I also believe that the main way we will do this is through the creation of a powerful nonviolent movement that will, ultimately, force out leaders and institutions to make the kind of radical changes this crisis demands. I don’t think, unfortunately, that we will be able to vote ourselves to a solution.

The other thing that surprised me was the extent to which this project changed the way I think about conflict in general. On a personal level, I’ve always been a person who’s disliked confrontation, and so I’ve viewed conflict as an essentially negative phenomenon. But writing this book made me see that it’s possible to create conflict in a way that is honorable and just, that respects all the sides involved, even one’s opponent. Conflict can, ultimately, be a very good thing.

And, of course, conflict is sometimes necessary as well, especially if you believe that the time for radical change has come. People with immediate access to power—and this includes all members of the establishment, whether they’re in politics or not—resist change. After all, the status quo is working for them. Even those institutions designed to facilitate change—elections being the most obvious example—will tend to favor the already powerful and thus make serious change difficult to achieve.

What this means is that radical change only happens through struggle and conflict. Those invested in the status quo must be forced to change—to share in power, to change unfair laws, to adapt new policies, to address long-standing injustices. All this requires conflict. And I believe the best way to create and manage the kind of conflict we need today is through nonviolence.