With universities tightening their grip on dissent, speech, and creativity, the opportunities for marginalized students to access social justice curriculum and mentorship are shrinking. A Feel for Thinking is a salve in these bleak conditions: a study guide for readers who want to ground themselves in radical ideas. In conversational style, Sharon Luk offers an orientation to long-standing ideas rooted in social justice traditions, helping readers unpack concepts in contemporary abolitionist thought.

Drawing on the conceptual work of major thinkers like Cedric Robinson on racial capitalism, Robyn Maynard and Ruth Wilson Gilmore on abolition, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson on Indigenous traditions of world-making, and Robin D.G. Kelley, Fred Moten, and Stefano Harney on solidarity, Luk suffuses A Feel for Thinking with personal stories of her own wayfinding through these complex ideas. Refuting the cynical expression, “those who can’t do, teach,” Luk proves that, on the contrary, those who teach, do. Luk demonstrates her skill in critical pedagogy, encouraging and supporting readers to cultivate their intellectual practice to anchor themselves in their uniqueness and specificities in struggle with others.