For readers of Valerie Kaur, Sonali Deraniyagala and Sarah Polley--A gripping memoir of grief, environmental activism, and a love story cut short
They want to know our stories.
They want to know our questions.
They want to know our truth demands.
In 1999, Abby Reyes lost her partner, Terence Freitas, as he and two other land rights activists traveled to Colombia to work alongside the Indigenous U'wa community. Kidnapped by rebel guerillas backed by the financial interests of a US-based oil company, their bodies were found days later, bound and bullet-riddled.
Two decades later, Reyes finds herself a recognized victim-survivor of the Havana Agreement's truth and reconciliation process, Case 001.
Plunged back into grief and memory, uncertainty and unknowable answers, Reyes is called once again to confront what it means to be beholden to the stories we don't ourselves write. She interrogates the lengths we go to when indebted to the lives and sacrifices of others, asking: what is our responsibility to those we've lost--and the causes they died for? How can we stay tethered to ourselves? And amidst it all, how do we remain?
Truth Demands charts Reyes' parallel journeys: navigating the waters of loss, identity, and impermanence while fighting for truth and accountability from an untouchable oil and extraction industry. A profound and haunting memoir of grief, passion, and ecological activism, Truth Demands shows us how to hold on as we let go--to feel into the choices we all must make, to move forward while beholden to the people and lands we owe. ABBY REYES is a human rights and environmental lawyer. She cut her teeth doing rural environmental legal assistance in the Philippines, her father's homeland, and walking alongside the Colombian U'wa pueblo for dignity against big oil. She is now director of community resilience at the University of California, Irvine, and trains food and climate student activists in transformative leadership statewide. A graduate of Stanford University and UC Berkeley Law, Reyes is a partner of the National Association of Climate Resilience Planners. This is her first book.
