'How to live in the face of so much suffering? What difference can one person make in this beautiful, imperfect, and imperilled world?'
In Draw Your Weapons, Sarah Sentilles offers an impassioned defence of life lived by peace and principle. Through a dazzling combination of memoir, history, reporting, visual culture, literature and theology, Sentilles tells the true stories of a conscientious objector during World War II and a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib. In the process she challenges conventional thinking about how violence is waged, witnessed and resisted.
Draw Your Weapons stirs and confronts, disturbs and illuminates. A single book might not change the world, but this utterly original meditation on art and war might transform the way you see the world—and that makes all the difference.
A former theologian, Sarah Sentilles completed her undergraduate degree at Yale and both a Masters and a Doctorate at Harvard. She was a college professor for over a decade before becoming a full time writer and is now a passionate advocate for life lived by peace and principle. Her previous books are Taught by America: A Story of Struggle and Hope in Compton, A Church of her Own: What Happens When A Woman Takes the Pulpit and Breaking Up With God: A Love Story. She lives in Idaho.
'Now more than ever, the world needs a book like Draw Your Weapons. With mastery, urgency and great courage, Sarah Sentilles investigates the histories of art, violence, war and human survival. In her haunting and absorbing narrative, the act of storytelling itself becomes a matter of life and death.' Ruth Ozeki
'An intriguing meditation on violence, imagery and language.' Ashleigh Wilson, Australian, Books of the Year 2017
'Sentilles has examined these issues so closely, I am inescapably interested in her opinions. At the same time I also appreciate her answer to a student, who, reacting to one of the many photographs of war and violence that Sentilles shows her classes, asked, "But what are we supposed to do?" Sentilles responded: "I don't know."' Saturday Paper
'Sarah Sentilles' Draw Your Weapons is one of the most erudite, original, and thought-provoking books I have ever read. A philosophical and moral meditation on pain, torture, and the violence of war—part memoir, part history, even a kind of secular prayer—this book asks us to look at terrible human darkness while also celebrating the ways in which love, connectedness, and the making of art nourish and redeem the human spirit.' Australian Book Review
'A formally elegant and intellectually rigorous argument for peace...Sentilles' book inspires us to be more than we are, to live beyond our historical moment. Not a call to arms so much as a call to the writers' pen.' Geordie Williamson, Best Books of 2017, Australian Book Review
'Had I not been asked to review Sarah Sentilles's Draw Your Weapons for these pages, I wouldn't have read it; I would have skimmed the blurb and scoffed at its idealism. "What difference can one person make in this beautiful, imperfect, and imperilled world?" Sentilles asks. This of all years, I am mightily thankful I was challenged to confront that question, and form my own answer. Her book is a vital antidote to political despondency and a testament to the transformative power of art.' Beejay Silcox, Australian, Books of the Year 2017
'Sentilles's book is a challenging read full of snippets thoughts and reflections. It cuts between time place and character. Part memoir part exploration it avoids...
