An Alphabet for Dreamers: How to See the World with Eyes Closed

A captivating and trailblazing look at how dreams serve as one of our most powerful ways to understand—and radically change—our world.

Borrowing from the traditional alphabet book genre for children, An Alphabet for Dreamers provides adult readers with a new grammar for dreams, or what neuroscientist Sidarta Riberio calls “oracles of the night.” In this book, Sharon Sliwinski restores dreaming to its proper place as an important worldmaking activity, one that offers a gateway to another way of seeing. Each of the short 26 chapters engages a dream from the historical record—from both the recent and distant past—to show how these experiences can help make sense of profound social conflicts and transform our shared reality.

Thinking alongside the dreams of powerful exemplars—from Harriet Tubman to contemporary Indigenous activist Abigail Echo-Hawk—readers come to understand how dream life is a crucial resource for generating new worlds and new ways of being. The book brings together urgent concerns from the domains of critical theory, visual culture, and mental health to show how dreaming serves as a vital source of knowledge and a crucial mode of thinking. As with traditional alphabet books, illustrations provide an integral voice. Each chapter of the book is accompanied by an original watercolor painting by Melinda Josie that visually underscores the way dreams serve as a unique medium for processing our lived experience. Together, the images and text form a delicate dialogue, drawing attention to the details of the central scenes, extending the book’s special mode of thinking in painted form.

By working alongside dreamers from the past and present, An Alphabet for Dreamers begins a new and much-needed conversation about the social and political importance of dream life.