by Kitty Stryker
Thornapple Press
10/17/2025, paperback
SKU: 9781990869730
An exploration of how to balance activism and relationships without burning out.
Balancing a devotion to activism with personal relationships can be incredibly difficult. Kitty Stryker shares her experience as an activist, street medic and relationship educator to help others pursue the important work while maintaining healthy relationships and without burning out.
In what is both a call to action and a candid memoir, Stryker is open about what she has learned and her perceived limitations. Recognizing that it can feel overwhelming to know how to effectively make change, she encourages readers to consider how they can best advocate for causes they believe in, presenting different types of activism and urging readers to honestly examine their own hesitations.
She also emphasizes that without taking care of our interpersonal relationships, many people burn out of activism at the very time when we need more people on the ground, and she offers practical strategies to avoid this and to encourage healthy relationships.
With a foreword by carla joy bergman.
Reviews:
"With the threat of Trumpian fascism mounting by the day, millions of people are looking for ways to become active and fight back. Love Rebels is the place to start. Its seamless blend of memoir, how-to, activist wisdom and poignant self-reflection provide an ideal blend for stimulating the kinds of difficult conversations necessary to construct durable communities of resistance to outlive MAGA." -- Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook
"Getting involved in activism for the first time can feel intimidating; some veteran activists may seem unrelatable and even hostile to rookies. Kitty Stryker is the opposite of that--an activist with deep experience and a generous eagerness to welcome new folks to the good struggle. Now, with this book, everyone can feel like they have a wise older sibling guiding them on their radical journey. You will finish this book, as Stryker says, 'fertilized by curiosity and warmed by the light of compassion.'" -- Dr. Lisa Mueller, author of The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists
"Love Rebels offers a tender and insightful roadmap for all who are fighting to maintain their humanity while refusing to surrender their people and principles." -- Soraya Chemaly, author of The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth after Trauma
About the Contributors:
Kitty Stryker has been working on defining and creating a consent culture for over a decade. Based in Berkeley, CA, she's the editor of Ask: Building Consent Culture and author of Ask Yourself: The Consent Culture Workbook, Say More: Consent Conversations for Teens and Love Rebels: How I Learned to Burn It Down Without Burning Out. She is especially interested in bringing conversations about consent into everyday life.
carla joy bergman is the author of Joyful Militancy, editor of Radiant Voices and Trust Kids!, and the co-founder of the online worker-run art, culture and politics journal CAW.