What People Say About Paul’s Work

Along with endorsements from widely read writers, teachers, and activists—Alice Walker, Howard Zinn, Jim Hightower—this page includes comments from workshop participants and readers of Paul’s work. We invite your feedback for posting on this page.

To: Paul Kivel From: Endia Thank you for...... Giving me that wonderful book I Can Make My World A Safer Place!! It is a really interesting book. I've gotten really into it!!!! Sometimes I read it in my bed. Well thank you again for the book it really is a honer.

“This earnest and practical book will serve as a primer for the millions of men and boys who have begun to recognize that the stopping of male violence is, as author Paul Kivel writes, truly Men’s Work.”

—Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

“I found your book so helpful, so powerful, and empowering … The exercises brought me to a whole new level of understanding and allowed me to face myself and my world of violence in a way that it has never been explored.”

—Inmate, Alberta, Canada

“I am a recovering alcoholic and addict. … Nothing in recovery has touched me like Men’s Work. I’ve been able to release feelings of inadequacy, my need to control, sexual inhibitions that interfered with far more of my life than I ever thought, and anger and resentments that enabled me to carry on the violence and hurt many lives.”

—Inmate, Bowling Green, Florida

“Uprooting Racism hits at the heart of one of America’s most complex problems—systemic white racism—which holds all colors and races in bondage. This is a great book, written with insight and courage.”

—Morris Dees, Southern Poverty Law Center

“I just finished reading Uprooting Racism, and what a fine book! So much good material, so lucidly presented. I’m a conventionally privileged white man—educated in Britain, now a Canadian—with a fairly clean track record on racism. Your chapter on “Home and Family” made me think we’d done a reasonable job in that department, producing two sensitive, broad-minded, activist daughters (one of whom lent me your book). You’ve certainly got me thinking about positive steps I can take to champion the cause.”

—Barry C

“Uprooting Racism is a uniquely sensitive, wise, practical guide for white people struggling with their feelings about race.”

—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

“Paul Kivel has done it again with You Call This a Democracy?, exploding another myth about our troubled land.”

—Jim Hightower, author of Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush

“You Call This a Democracy? should be a required text in classrooms throughout the country.”

—Suzanne Pharr, author of In the Time of the Right