The book is about the ways in which economically and socially marginalized people experience rejection daily.

It concerns the struggle for dignity against relentless contempt. It uses part of the author's own experience living in poverty throughout the first 25 years of his life, as he cycles in and out of prison, the healthcare system, and homelessness, and how he and his companions navigate their traumas and one another.

It addresses the violence of patriarchal capitalism and white supremacy and the ways in which this violence injures our bodies and minds.

But it also concerns love, care, and solidarity, which is the everyday revolutionary practice from below.