From award-winning author Mitali Perkins comes an essential companion for writers, artists, and other creatives who long for a more just world. Why should we make art while injustice and suffering wreak havoc? How can we justify making beautiful things? Author Mitali Perkins isn't afraid of hard questions about justice and art. She knows that the creative life can seem selfish. As the daughter of immigrants, she studied toward a career of eradicating poverty and knows the internal voice that challenges: "How dare you retreat to your studio to create?" Yet Perkins learned that writing fiction wasn't setting aside her passion for a better world but pursuing it. In Just Making, she offers a justice-driven perspective unique among books on creativity. "My ancestors are village Bengali women who made beautiful things but didn't dare to dream of art as a career," she writes. Women across the globe have crafted beauty and order amid chaos, war, and deprivation, and Perkins turns our attention to what we learn from them. Just Making introduces us to strategies such as forgetfulness in flow, tenderness in trauma, and crossing borders. In conversation with creative guides like Nikki Grimes, Chad Somers, and Carol Aust, Perkins offers ten practices that help creatives keep making. Persevering through pushback from within and without, we can keep making art that heals human suffering, transmits truth, and confronts the oppressor. Here are dispatches for young and not-so-young creatives, crafted by a writer committed to shalom: the flourishing of all. We must keep making art infused with truth, beauty, and goodness, not to ignore a world in distress but for the sake of loving it. With vivid stories, practical ideas, and reflection and discussion questions, Just Making will inspire you to keep making beauty in a broken world.
Mitali Perkins is an award-winning author of novels and picture books for young readers, including You Bring the Distant Near; Forward Me Back to You; Rickshaw Girl; and Bamboo People, among others. Her books have been nominated for the National Book Award, have won the South Asia Book Award, and have been listed as Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and School Library Journal. Born in Kolkata, India, Perkins has lived in India, Ghana, Cameroon, Great Britain, Mexico, Bangladesh, Thailand, and the United States. She lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area.
"One of the essential joys of reading is finding that 'yes!' on the page, that 'aha!' Nothing is better than encountering that anecdote, that thought, that idea with which you resonate deeply. If you are a creative, you'll discover many such moments tucked between the covers of Just Making. There are whole libraries of how-to books dedicated to craft-building, and to the pursuit of commercial success as a creative, but fewer that lean into the necessary steps to secure what is good, what is healthy, what is healing for the artist's heart. This is one such book. . . As creatives, we must fortify ourselves daily if we're to survive the journey. Perkins suggests intuitive perspectives and practices that can guide us. Readers will thank her for them. I certainly do." --Nikki Grimes, bestselling and award-winning author of Ordinary Hazards and other books "By inquiring into the relationship between the making of art and the performance of justice, Mitali Perkins foregrounds questions that any serious creative has to grapple with. By identifying and clarifying the kinds of questions that need to be asked about that relationship, and by setting them in such a winsome and vulnerable and engaging form, she has done those serious creatives an enormous service. This is a book to be read with gratitude." --Gary D. Schmidt, Newbery Honor and Printz Honor author of The Wednesday Wars and other books "Just Making is a balm to every soul wrestling with how to pursue beauty in a weary world. With tenderness and wisdom, Perkins compassionately reminds us that our art is not separate from justice, but intertwined with it. She offers a compassionate commissioning for us to make art justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. This expansive offering of hope reminds us that in the work of our hands, we hold a sacred call to co-labor in the renewal of all things. I needed this book." --Kayla Craig, author of Every Season Sacred and To Light Their Way and creator of Liturgies for Parents "Mitali Perkins is an exceptional teacher and writer, and in Just Making, she brings her immense gifts and wide experience together in a book that is both rich in ideas and pragmatic in application. In engaging, accessible prose, Just Making provides theological and practical insights to give readers ways to understand that creativity--in all its forms--is not a luxury or a move away from a faithful life, but deeply connected to justice and shalom." --Dr. Jennifer L. Holberg, chair of Calvin University English Department and author of Nourishing Narratives
