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S ep t 26,2014
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iVzT/z a new edition o f “The Impossible Will Take a Little While,”
Paul Loeb wants people to know change is still on the way
BY ROSETTE ROYALE
Association and the History Channel, the
book has been revised for a 2014 edition.
n late May, poet, actress and civil rights
Some book reissues lead to book tours
activist Maya Angelou died. Her death
for authors. Such was the case for Loeb,
was met with grief, and her life, which
also the author of “Soul of a Citizen;” As he
began in the Jim Crow South, was seen as prepared for a journey to the East Coast
an inspiration. Just about everything she
earlier this summer, we chatted over the
wrote touched on how when life (or racism
phone about Obama and hope, McDonald’s
or sexism or poverty or...) knocks you
and Starbucks, pipelines and protests, and
down, the only thing to do is get back up.
the difference between then and now.
This sentiment courses through perhaps
her most well-known poem, “Still. I Rise.”
Rosette Roy ale: The first edition of “The
Here’s the first verse:
Impossible Will Take a Little While” came out
You may write me down in history
in 2004. Why did you decide to put the book
With your bitter, twisted lies,
together?
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I rise.
Paul Loeb: I think a lot of it had to do
The full poem, with its mix of lyricism
with the Iraq War, and the feeling that many
and self-determination, shows up almost at
people had put so much energy into trying
the very end of a book edited by Paul Loeb,
to prevent it and then it just went ahead
“The Impossible Will Take a Little While:
anyway. Then it sort of turned out to be the
Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times” disaster that a lot of people predicted. I
(Basic Books, $18.99). A collection of
(wondered), “Does trying to act for change,
writings from more than 50 contemporary
does it actually do any good? Is it
figures — liberal writer and academic Cornel worthwhile? Should we continue?” So I
West, former New Yorker journalist and
thought: Who do I go to for sustenance?
current environmental activist Bill
And so I went through all my bookshelves,
McKibben, National Book Award-winning
which I have a lot, and made this huge pile
local writer Sherman Alexie — the hook is
of books on the floor: “Oh, here’s Nelson
like Angelou’s poem, only writ large: It
Mandela, here’s Alice Walker, here’s
gives readers a sense that even when you’re Howard Zinn, here’s Terry Tempest
faced with the insurmountable, the
Williams.” Here are all these people who
potential for success exists. And much like
have inspired me, who kept me going. So
the poem’s title, the book also continues to
that was the start of the project Then I
rise. Initially published in 2004,
when it was named a top 10 political
See MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, page 9
book by the American Book
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
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