Extract from I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE: A Trans Girl’s Notes From the End of the World

Kai Cheng Thom, 2019

What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in, when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? How can we love in the absence of faith?

In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, acclaimed poet and essayist Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author’s characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness. Taking its cues from contemporary thought leaders in the transformative justice movement such as adrienne maree brown and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, this provocative book is a call for nuance in a time of political polarization, for healing in a time of justice, and for love in an apocalypse.

Kai Cheng Thom

Kai Cheng Thom is a Canadian writer. She has published several books, including the novels Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir (2016) and From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (2017), the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (2017), and the essay collection I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World (2019).

Olave Nduwanje

Olave Nduwanje is a Burundi-born, Brussels-based, Black non-binary Trans* Femme (pronouns: she/her/hers). She identifies as a Queer Feminist Umurundikazi. She is an activist (anti-racism, LGBTQI+ rights, anti-capitalism, disability rights, anti-ecocide, etc.), legal scholar and lawyer, and became a candidate council member for the Haagse Stadspartij in the past municipal elections. She is a content creator, notably of her Olave Talks, and an avid writer in different genres. She  is a published author and has provided literary contributions to the following titles: Zwart. Afro-Europese Literatuur uit de Lage Landen (2018), De Goede Immigrant (2020), and Being (Imposed Upon) (2020).