Calling in: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel

From a pioneering Black feminist and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, an urgent and exhilarating memoir-manifesto-handbook about how to rein in the excesses of cancel culture so we can truly communicate and solve problems together.

In 1979, Loretta Ross was a single mother who’d had to drop out of Howard University. She was working at Washington, DC’s Rape Crisis Center when she got a letter from a man in prison saying he wanted to learn how to not be a rapist anymore. At first, she was furious. As a survivor of sexual violence, she wanted to write back pouring out her rage. But instead, she made a different choice, a choice to reject the response her trauma was pushing her towards, a choice that set her on the path towards developing a philosophy that would come to guide her whole career: rather than calling people out, try to call even your unlikeliest allies in. Hold them accountable—but do so with love.

Calling In is at once a handbook, a manifesto, and a memoir—because the power of Loretta Ross’s message comes from who she is and what she’s lived through. She’s a Black woman who’s deprogrammed white supremacists, a survivor who’s taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism. With stories from her five remarkable decades in activism, she vividly illustrates why calling people in—inviting them into conversation instead of conflict by focusing on your shared values over a desire for punishment—is the more strategic choice if you want to make real change. And she shows you how to do so, whether in the workplace, on a college campus, or in your living room.

Courageous, awe-inspiring, and blisteringly authentic, Calling In is a practical new solution from one of our country’s most extraordinary change-makers—one anyone can learn to use to transform frustrating and divisive conflicts that stand in the way of real connection with the people in your life.