Reviews

"Kabat's beautiful, moving memoir of her brother Luke's civil rights activism in Meridian, MS during Freedom Summer is at once a compelling historical document and deeply personal homage. Lucien, a medical student at Stanford, left the safety of Palo Alto in the summer of 1964 to be one of more than 700 student activists risking their lives for racial equality. He'd had a good role model in own his father, blacklisted during the McCarthy era for refusing to fire other blacklisted doctors. Forced to move to Providence, RI for the only work in his field he could get, he and his family were met by the discreet wall of genteel anti-Semitism. It is in the context of this silent shunning that the deep bond between Julie and her brother grew and thrived, and his own activism was born. By using Luke's letters and diary entries to tell the story, Kabat brings this extraordinary young man into vivid, breathing life."

— Marjorie Darraugh, Manager of Pegasus Books on Solano, Berkeley, California

"Drawing on a wealth of resources—her brother's diary and letters, periodicals and books, radio and television, and interviews, some made at the fiftieth anniversary of Freedom Summer in 2014—Julie Kabat creates a compelling story about a significant period in the nation's history and addresses continuing issues of civil rights and racial equality."

— Ann J. Abadie, coeditor of The Mississippi Encyclopedia

"Luke did what so many did. He volunteered. Teaching, mobilizing, befriending, giving of himself in ways great and small to Freedom Summer. What is remarkable about that volunteering, is that he wrote it all down so candidly, so copiously, plainly, naively, bravely, commenting, evolving, challenging himself – and challenging each of us who read his incisive thoughts so many years later. Published, his journal entries and letters sit in the middle of a scatter of thousands of words written about Freedom Summer. But, because they were written in a moment of action, written for the purpose of grappling with his conscience, they permit us a rare journey. By writing as he did, he takes us into his mind – and into the hearts of so many others. He does something else, too. Luke was an extraordinary person taking ordinary actions in an extraordinary time. By leaving us with his unvarnished history, he shows us how simple humanity still means something – and how our own inner humanity will always mean something."

— Michael Eastman, Legal Historian | Archivist | Senior Librarian, Stanford University Libraries and Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Stanford University

"Julie Kabat has written a remarkable book. Love Letter from Pig introduces us to her brother Luke, a third-year medical student teaching in a Mississippi Freedom School. Through Luke we meet his students, thrilled at being exposed to new knowledge; family members, concerned about his welfare; and fellow Freedom Summer volunteers. Love Letter from Pig is about idealism, courage in the face of adversity, but mostly it's about love."

— Paul Murray, civil rights veteran and professor emeritus at Siena College, New York

"Love Letter from Pig recounts the complicated story of courageous, non-violent actions against the exploitation of Black Americans in rural Mississippi. While some changes have occurred in Philadelphia and Meridian, Mississippi, the unlearned lessons of that time persist in America. Kabat's story reveals the tragic outcomes often embedded in the fight for justice and freedom."

— Irving Weissman, Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor of Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research and founding director of the immunology program, Stanford University School of Medicine

"I submit for your approval a list of my own favorites from reading and viewing many of last year's offerings. Love Letter from Pig: My Brother's Story of Freedom Summer - In that season of 1964, a coalition of national voter rights organizations flooded Mississippi with volunteers in aid of African Americans long intimidated by local government officials, and/or physically attacked by bigots and brutes (often on the payroll of local police departments). Through it all, including a spot of jail time, Luke Kabat kept his poise and his principles in seeing to it that black men and women, only a handful of generations from slavery, could safely become registered voters. In telling Luke's story, his sister necessarily credits the admirable Kabat family: Her maternal grandfather Ber-Leib fought in the 1905 anti-czarist Russian revolution; her maternal Uncle Sam, a labor organizer, fought on the anti-fascist side of the Spanish Civil War; her father, a distinguished physician who lost his job in standing up for democratic ideals during the anti-communist hysteria that shamed America in the 1950s. The ideals of the author's big brother echo the honor of his family elders and speak to his own sense of moral resistance to injustice, and of moral poetry."

— Thomas Adcock, CulturMag – Berlin, Montag, 1. January 2024