By a Macalester student and ESFL intern who wishes to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
Written in August 2025
Do you ever feel overwhelmed with the complexity and violence of our world? Do you struggle seeing the light and understanding why horrible things happen and how to make them stop? Ricardo Levins Morales’ “The Land Knows The Way” offers a comprehensive overview of how systems of oppression, violence and injustices are interconnected and how to fight it. Rather than overwhelming the reader with distressing information, Ricardo draws on a wide range of examples of injustice and trauma in our world, linking them to natural processes and highlighting how mutual aid and community movements can offer healing. We can come “home to a future that we have never seen but have always known and for which we yearn with every cell and fiber in our bodies.”
I find Ricardo to be a very impressive person. He was born in the anti-colonial movement in Puerto Rico, subsequently getting into activism once his family moved to Chicago in 1967. As he writes in the book, he left high school early as he felt school “impeded his learning”. Instead, he developed his art and used it as part of his activism, supporting the Black Panthers and Young Lords. He also participated in movements for farmers and environmental, labour and racial justice. He uses his art to support and aid individual and collective healing from ongoing realities of oppression. “The Land Knows The Way” is Ricardo’s first book, where he addresses questions of activism on the global, national, local and personal levels. He brings in many historical examples as well as intimate reflections on his parents and their role in socialism and social activism, and the effect that this had on him and his personal ideology and ideas.
The book explores a really wide range of topics, which is especially helpful for people who might have felt before that there are wrong and unjust things in the world, but feel overwhelmed processing and coming to terms with it. Ricardo discusses it all; from colonialism, to racism to capitalism and a better, alternative future. This book is perfect for exploring these things and answering questions which are emotionally challenging and difficult to face. Ricardo, as an artist, has a beautiful way with words. I believe this is what makes this book unique. His artistic talents vividly bring his descriptions to life, allowing the reader to visualize his points more clearly and draw stronger conclusions. This, in turn, encourages critical reflection on the modern world, its political structures, and the global order. Especially its plea and insistence on a better world is so re-assuring to me. Ricardo goes straight against the capitalist belief that this is all we are: that we are naturally competitive, selfish and violent and this is the only way of life that is imaginable; that we can’t expect to be living communally, sharing and collaboratively, because that goes against our nature. Ricardo challenges these assumptions and even goes as far as to say that their purpose is to make us feel insecure about ourselves and distrustful of others.
We need these ideas as we struggle to create a safer and healthier world to live in. The East Side Freedom Library has been a place where diverse neighbors can come together to explore these ideas, identify issues, and organize together to take on challenges. For more than a year, ESFL has been home to the East Side Environmental Justice Group, which has worked to educate and organize neighbors to address the lead and silica pollution spewing from the Northern Iron Foundry, sickening children with asthma and creating an unhealthy environment for many East Siders. Ricardo’s book provides us with inspiration and ideas which we can put to use.
A better world is possible, and it lies in creating a strong community where we have each other’s backs, just like we are naturally inclined to do. This hopeful picture by Ricardo, through his gorgeous metaphors of natural phenomena, like rivers, trees and fungi systems, left me with a warm feeling, an energizing feeling. It reignited my drive to fight for what we deserve and believe in; for a better system that does not hurt, but uplifts everyone. Ricardo underlines there have been attempts to achieve this, and there will be more. I believe the book’s hopeful vision is crucial in today’s world, where we’re constantly confronted with bad news and the future often feels bleak and hopeless. People who feel paralysed by the immensity and systematic nature of this violence mechanism and feel like there is no other way. I urge you to read this book, become inspired by both Ricardo’s personal, academic and artistic experiences and create a road map, a natural argument, for a better future that we all deserve.