Book Review: Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel

A new book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel  by Dr. Lorette Ross, has recently been added to the library collection and is ready for checkout! Read on for a review of the book by one of our members, Susan Duncan:

Life can be complicated. I've made mistakes. I’ve called people out with absolutes on social media. I’ve offered unsolicited advice. I’ve raised my voice at family gatherings and caught myself gesturing from behind the wheel. I’ve engaged in behaviors that make others feel less than human and been targeted by people who once thought that these kinds of behavior could even possibly be appropriate. Fortunately, I’ve had a change of heart.

Dr. Loretta Ross has lived a life worth writing about. She explains how to change a problematic “Calling Out Culture” into a redemptive “Calling In Culture.” In the book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel, Dr. Ross tells stories about learning the importance of “Calling in,” how to be strategic, model accountability, and check her own heart. She details techniques used by people to create cultures that let go of hate. Dr. Lorreta Ross is her authentic self as she advocates for justice. Her faith in people reminds me of this phrase on a bookmark that was given to me by a minister familiar with surviving a Holocaust, “God sees us as God wants us to be but loves us as we are.” Dr. Lorreta Ross tells me that by "putting ourselves on pause," we can access our integrity and intelligence. She proves that changing the brain can change the little brain of the heart…before opening social media or my mouth.

Reading Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel, provides an important perspective for social justice advocates that resonates with the engagement skills from the recent sermon series “I’ve been meaning to ask.”