Hold Nothing Back: Writings by Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) was a well-known American journalist, activist, and Catholic convert whose cause for sainthood has been endorsed by the US bishops. She wrote numerous articles over a period of several decades for the prominent lay Catholic magazine Commonweal. Hold Nothing Back is gleaned from those writings. It includes reflections on her life as a single mother, her time in jail for civil disobedience, her struggles to keep the Catholic Worker movement she cofounded afloat, and her travels on crowded buses to report from the front lines about labor disputes, racial inequality, and poverty. At the heart of whatever Day wrote lies a profound and prophetic faith. Hold Nothing Back—a new, abridged edition of the previously published Dorothy Day: Writings from Commonweal—gives a glimpse of her remarkable humanity and endurance, and of the vibrant spirituality that underlay them.

Table of Contents:
Contents Foreword   xi by Kate Hennessy Preface   xv by Patrick Jordan 1  Guadalupe   1      February 26, 1930 2  Bed   5      May 27, 1931 3  Now We Are Home Again   9      August 19, 1931 4  East Twelfth Street   14      November 30, 1932 5  For the Truly Poor   20      March 15, 1933 6  Saint John of the Cross   25      July 14, 1933 7  Houses of Hospitality   30      April 15, 1938  8  The House on Mott Street   35      May 6, 1938 9  Tale of Two Capitals   41      July 14, 1939 10  It Was a Good Dinner   49      August 23, 1940 11  About Mary   54      November 5, 1943 12  The Scandal of the Works of Mercy   58      November 4, 1949 13  Traveling by Bus   66      March 10, 1950 14  We Plead Guilty   72      December 27, 1957 15  Letter: From Dorothy Day   81      June 13, 1958 16  Pilgrimage to Mexico   83      December 26, 1958 17  Southern Pilgrimage   90      March 31, 1961 18  ‘A. J.’   96      March 24, 1967 19  A Reminiscence at 75   102      August 10, 1973 Index   107

About the Author :
Patrick Jordan (1944 – 2025) served as the former managing editor of The Catholic Worker. He and his wife Kathleen were associated with Dorothy Day from 1968 until her death in 1980. From 1984 to 2012, Jordan was an editor at Commonweal magazine. He is the author of Hold Nothing Back: Writings by Dorothy Day, and Dorothy Day: Love in Action; and served as editor of Dorothy Day: Writings from Commonweal, and Only Wonder Comprehends: John Garvey in Commonweal, published by Liturgical Press. He served on the advisory board of the Dorothy Day Guild.

Review :
Dorothy Day is the relentless prophet of justice for our time. In these historic essays, she reminds us that great political action against oppression is driven by religious faith, especially faith that invites us to profound trust, to humble poverty, to doing the smallest of tasks with the greatest of loves. Day's words are charged with anger and discontent just as they are filled with the spark "that would set afire the love of men towards each other and to God." From motherhood to itinerant teacher, she is in the end, our prophet of love-"love to the point of folly"-love that is both childlike and painful, both restless and intimate, always a witness to the gospel without exception and without apology too.Timothy Shriver, Chairman, Special Olympics