SAY IT LIKE A PRAYER
Sacred Words for Liberation, Hope, and Healing
A powerful anthology of prayers and poems for navigating crisis, sustaining resistance, and imagining a more just future. With contributions from major literary activist voices like adrienne maree brown, Joy Harjo, Chani Nicholas, Hala Alyan, and Prentis Hemphill, Say It Like a Prayer is to be carried and cherished—into the streets, into moments of celebration and grief, through uncertainty, crises, and the daily rhythms of our lives.
Coming March 16, 2027
“A bold and life-giving curation of missives sent into the ether to save and repair, which is, to my mind, the oldest and most formidable use of language. How lucky to be reminded of its power here, both on the page and inside these dire hours.“
-Ocean Vuong, NYT bestselling author
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About the book
Say It Like a Prayer is a bold anthology of more than one hundred prayers and poems for uncertain times. Gathering invocations, blessings, meditations, spells, and counterspells from beloved community organizers, faith leaders, changemakers, and poets, this collection offers language for the moments when we are called to grieve, resist, gather, transform—and imagine a more beautiful, liberatory future into being.
These are “prayers that are also poems, blessings that are also spells”: words meant to be lived with, spoken aloud, returned to, and shared. Open this book at protests and vigils, celebrations and memorials, rallies and rituals. Dog-ear its pages. Keep it on your kitchen table or by your bed. Full of prayers for starting and ending the day, cultivating courage before an action, and inviting in creative energy. Blessings for children, seasons, and tactics of resistance. Lamentations for Gaza, grieving the loss of a loved one, and prayers for loving between prison walls. Incantations for healing, breaking old patterns and becoming ever new, and summoning and seeding a new world. Drawing from multiple traditions and lineages, Say It Like a Prayer is a call to practice and a companion for collective struggle.
Contributors include: George Abraham, Hala Alyan, Fatimah Asghar, Cameron Awkward-Rich, hannah baer, Morgan Bassichis, adrienne maree brown, CAConrad, Edgar Fabián Frías, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Joy Harjo, Prentis Hemphill, Tricia Hersey, Donika Kelly, Andrea Lawlor, Chani Nicholas, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lama Rod Owens, Fariha Roísin, Yumi Sakugawa, Sam Sax, Danez Smith, Dean Spade, Sonya Renee Taylor, Kai Cheng Thom, brontë velez, Norma Ryūkō Kaewlokū Wong, J Wortham, and more.
“The need for prayer has never been more clear. Thankfully Dori Midnight’s Say It Like a Prayer generously delivers prayer in abundance: prayer for troubles and prayer for pleasure and prayer for power. Say It Like a Prayer guides the reader towards a keener awareness and appreciation of the real spiritual connections underpinning our lives while urging us to act from that same place of spiritual power. You don’t need to believe in prayer to enjoy this blessed collection, Say It Like a Prayer deeply believes in you.“
-Tourmaline, artist and activist
