Mitali Perkins is well known for her award-winning novels and picture books for young readers, including Rickshaw Girl and You Bring the Distant Near. This time, the award-winning author speaks to all creatives in her new book Just Making, written for adults.
She asks the age-old question: How can we take time to create art when there is so much injustice in the world? Her answer is in the Introduction: “I believe we must keep creating art—not by ignoring a world in distress but for the sake of loving it. … I wrote this book as a guide for creative people who are concerned about justice.”
Perkins weaves her story throughout, along with the stories of other creatives, for a personal and life-giving tool to help think about our process of creative making. She first addresses how we can discover justice for the maker of art, the receiver, and the community in which art is made, “essentially a relationship of mystery—a dance with a creative product that takes place among makers, receivers, and communities.”
She then speaks into what stops us from making our art—a brutal market and our internal voices—before offering 10 practices to help creatives stay on the making journey. These practices include seeking mentors, embracing vulnerability, and creating rhythms of rest and work. Another addresses the anger that can arise from injustice and how to use that anger as fuel for just making instead of letting it become all-consuming.
Just Making is as thought-provoking as it is useful. Creatives will find much to consider as they work toward justice with their making, while also finding concrete and useful tools to incorporate into their creative work and lives. While the book isn’t overtly faith-based, creators of faith will see the Divine Creator in all of the messages here. Justice and shalom, after all, come straight from God.
Perkins says at the end of Just Making: “Ultimately, we can theorize and ruminate and talk as much as we want. … But when it comes down to it, we pick up a brush or face the keyboard or wield the particular instrument needed for our work. In the end, the work of creativity and justice all hinges on a verb. When it comes right down to it, we just make it!” (Broadleaf)
About the Author
Ann Byle is author of Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens. She is a freelance writer and author of several other books, magazine articles, and reviews. She lives in Grand Rapids, Mich.