Do The Work

A guide to understanding power and creating change.

Confront your biases to change the world! Do The Work is a sharp workbook by educator Professor Roxane Gay and writer Dr. Megan Pillow, who discuss those with power and those without.

Challenge your biases and broaden your understanding of power and how we wield it with this essential guide.
 
Power is complex. But Do The Work is a guide to navigating those complexities. From ancient theories of power to contemporary examples, from cultural patterns to personal insights, this guide provides a foundation for examining hierarchies and inequalities and establishes a framework for understanding power and how it shapes our lives and communities.
 
Between these pages, theory, commentary, and analysis create an engaging, creative, and mindful reading experience. This guide features approachable overviews of complex topics, thought-provoking questions, evocative illustrations, pages for your reflections, and steps we can all take to reframe our relationship to power and reinvigorate our desire to empower the people around us.
 
Thanks to the work of writer and scholar Megan Pillow, educator and New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay, and New York Times bestselling illustrator Aurélia Durand, Do The Work is a must-read for a more just future—and a more equitable now.

Do The Work asks:

• What can we learn about power from history and from our current moment?
• Who are the powerful, and who are the people denied power?
• Where are our own sources of power?
• How do we recognize our mistakes and become more self-aware?
• What does it mean to reclaim our power and to build community?
  
  

Do The Work explains:

• How theorists from Aristotle to Hannah Arendt have shaped our understanding of power
• Why Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality is at the heart of power discussions
• What Laura Mulvey and Audre Lorde can teach us about power and gender
• How poverty, redlining, and The Voting Rights Act all illustrate power imbalances
• What the Stonewall Riots showed us about resistance and community
• How to train ourselves in collective thinking, and what it means to “choose the margins”