Abstract

This is a book about beauty. It features fourteen people from different walks of life who talk about the impact of their encounters with beauty. Though we talk about beauty all the time, we don’t discuss its effects on our private lives. The media and our consumer culture is fixated on outward beauty, and in response our schools fear that beauty and aesthetic judgment reinforces hierarchies and lead to exclusion. The conversations in this book offer a different perspective, as a waitress, an auto restorer, a ballet teacher, an exotic dancer, a labor organizer, a choir director, and others discuss how it feels to be in the presence of something beautiful: what in life prepared them for these encounters; whether beauty makes them feel part of a community, affects their morality, and can be described as religious or spiritual. These conversations describe a vital part of contemporary life that remains unexplored, until now. The people in this book speak about beauty as an indispensable blessing that provides re-creation, restoration, affirmation, and in many cases community and social engagement that a meaningful life requires. They confirm what Simone Weil once observed: “beautiful things are like tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space.”