Making Worlds Book Launch and Discussion: Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution Christina Heatherton
Christina Heatherton presents an internationalist history of the Mexican Revolution and helps us rethink the meaning of solidarity today.
The Mexican Revolution was a global event that catalyzed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Tracing the paths of figures like Black American artist Elizabeth Catlett, Indian anti-colonial activist M.N. Roy, Mexican revolutionary leader Ricardo Flores Magón, Okinawan migrant organizer Paul Shinsei Kōchi, and Soviet feminist Alexandra Kollontai, Arise! reveals how activists around the world found inspiration and solidarity in revolutionary Mexico.
From art collectives and farm worker strikes to prison "universities," Arise! reconstructs how this era's radical organizers found new ways to fight global capitalism. Drawing on prison records, surveillance data, memoirs, oral histories, visual art, and a rich trove of untapped sources, Christina Heatherton considers how disparate revolutionary traditions merged in unanticipated alliances. From her unique vantage point, she charts the remarkable impact of the Mexican Revolution as radicals in this critical era forged an anti-racist internationalism from below.
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Christina Heatherton is the Elting Associate Professor of American Studies and Human Rights at Trinity College. She is the author of Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution (University of California Press, 2022) and co-editor of Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (Verso, 2016). For two decades she has been working with social movements to produce collaborative works of political and popular education.
Praise for Arise!
“One of the most thrillingly original books I have read. It offers profound, sometimes startling connections that put an entire era of worldwide revolution in a brilliant new light.”—Marcus Rediker, Coauthor, The Many‑Headed Hydra
“Finally! The Mexican Revolution is restored to its rightful place as…a beacon of liberty to oppressed people throughout the world.” —Paul Ortiz, An African American and Latinx History of the United States
“Christina Heatherton’s extraordinary history of radical politics across the globe is the book we urgently need.” —Keeanga‑Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit
“A staggeringly good handbook for imagining a more just future.”—Laleh Khalili, Sinews of War and Trade
“Here is history for the hungry soul.” —Peter Linebaugh, Red Round Globe Hot Burning
