About Me

MY NAME IS AURORA LEVINS MORALES. WELCOME TO MY ONLINE HOME.

Only people who understand and practice interdependence are capable of making good ecological decisions, therefore, anything that threatens human interdependence is also an ecological threat...We have the creativity and intelligence to solve the problems we face, but the vast majority of human ingenuity is tied up in fighting to survive oppression. That creativity is the single most essential natural resource on earth. The work of social justice is to free it.

Silt

I spent October at A Studio in the Woods in New Orleans, after an eight day journey down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to Lafayette and across the River's mouth to New Orleans. Silt is a prose poetry project that explores the natural and social landscapes of the Mississippi River system and the Caribbean Sea. I immersed myself in the ecology, history and people of the River and the Islands, meeting fascinating artists, activists, historians and scientists who engage with these bodies of water and our interactions with them.

Welcome to the new community members who pledged support during my journey down the Mississippi River.

Support my work!

De CLARAcion: the video

I live-streamed my reading of DeCLARAción, a declaration of Puerto Rican sovereignty, dreamed up with my brother Ricardo Levins Morales and written by me. Watch/listen to it here.
DeCLARAción will be available soon as a print pamphlet.

Join my Patreon Community for early access to my newest writing, behind the scenes stories about my projects and more.

Every week I get letters from people telling me how much it matters to them that I am writing the things I write, especially in these challenging times. In order to keep doing it, I need an income stream that's independent of marketing my books, selling pieces to magazines or getting grants. I need a large community of small donors, people who subscribe to my work, and recognize that as a chronically ill, disabled elder, there's only so much I can do, and it should be the writing that serves my communities. You can sign up for Patreon for as little as $1 a month and keep the words flowing.

Tai: A Yom Kippur Sermon

Last year I gave the Yom Kippur morning sermon at my synagogue. I spoke about joy as the only reliable source of long term courage, and I spoke about finding the eye of the storm, the clear place where we can navigate by stars instead of being buffeted by weather. And I did so in Taino face paint, making myself visible as an Indigenous Puerto Rican Jew.
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Meet Aurora

I'm a writer, an artist, a historian, a teacher and mentor. I'm a also an activist, a healer, a revolutionary. I tell stories with medicinal powers. Herbalists who collect wild plants to make medicine call it wildcrafting. I wildcraft the details of the world, of history, of people's lives, and concentrate them through art in order to shift consciousness, to change how we think about ourselves, each other and the world.

I am a woman with chronic illness and disability, because my body is unable to handle the toxic load of 21st century capitalism. I can't crank out books, go on speaking tours, teach at a university, attend conferences, go to meetings and marches, or work an eight hour day. I've had to invent other ways to engage with the world.

I call what I do homeopathic activism. Homeopathy uses minute amounts of true substance to trigger powerful self-healing responses in our bodies. Homeopathic medicines are made by diluting and shaking, diluting and shaking. The more diluted a remedy is, the more powerful its effects. Homeopaths believe that as the remedy is potentized, the original substance leaves its energy imprint, the essential pattern of its nature, the idea of itself, in the diluting water and that this is what has the power to awaken our bodies' own inherent defenses and create health.

Because I have very little physical energy and a lot to contribute, I look for the one or two most potent molecules of what I'm thinking about, the particles that could help wake up our individual and collective immune systems. Then I potentize them through art, through metaphor, through storytelling, through posing questions and suggesting possibilities.

Some of what I do is writing. Some of it is visual art. Some of it is conversation. Some of it is mentoring. Some of it is ritual. Whether they're lectures or embroidered and beaded photographs printed on silk, I like to call the things I create talismans. Objects meant to spark unexpected transformation. I can call myself a writer, or an artist, or a historian. The title of the moment doesn't matter. What matters is whether I'm effectively opening up new possibilities, making and revealing connections, building relationships.

What matters is that the world is in great danger from runaway greed. The only thing that can stop it is large numbers of people becoming able to imagine and then create something better. When Harriet Tubman was praised for freeing hundreds of slaves, she said "I could have freed thousands, if I could have made them believe they were slaves." The stories we tell about our lives shape what we're able to imagine, and what we can imagine determines what we can do. My job is to change the stories we tell and help us imagine a world where greed has no power, the earth is cherished and all people get to live safe and satisfying lives. Because once we truly imagine it, the pull to create it becomes irresistible.