Do The Work

"Do The Work" is a straightforward guide to understanding power and creating change. Pillow empowers readers to take action and make a difference with clear insights and practical advice. It's an inspiring read for anyone ready to tackle social issues and create positive impact in their communities.

This book was really well constructed, and I particularly enjoyed how is was structured for both self-exploration and group discussion. I hadn’t realized that I primarily viewed power as a negative concept, and this was such a helpful tool to reframe that belief and learn tools to use my power to help uplift others.

This book is a really concise primer for anyone who is interested in social justice and wants to dip their toes in. While I would love for it to be the kind of book that would change who my boomer relatives are as people, this is not that. I think there are certain things about it that do bode well for convincing people or making people see things in a different light, such as grounding everything in research and scholarly discourse, but generally speaking, I would say this book is for people who at least know that things in our society are messed up and very unfair for many different groups of people. It provides really nice explanations and spaces for reflection on the topics of what power is and where people and communities derive power from, intersectionality, privilege, and different communities that are impacted by power discrepancies, such as the disabled community, people who are women, trans, or non-binary, and people of color. I think it would be a great book for a young person in high school or college to get them started on their journey to start making positive changes in our world!