A thought-provoking guide to fugitive practice—cultivating inner freedom and wayfinding toward liberation, even when the way is uncertain—from artist and organizer Autumn Brown.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “fugitive”?

To beloved organizer and artist Autumn Brown, the fugitive offers the medicine we need to tend to the wounds we’ve inherited—no matter our race or identity—under supremacy systems of greed, oppression and individualism. Fugitives might not know what freedom will look or feel like, or how the path to get there will unfold, but they courageously hold liberation in their hearts as they begin the journey. And just as a blade is tempered into sharpness and strength, the fugitive is tempered through resilient and loving action.

Rooted in personal story, Black feminist wisdom, and imaginative ancestral realms, Temper invites us to step away from analysis and intellect as our primary forms of knowledge and into the freedom of fugitive practice. Because like Autumn says, “Fugitive practice states—I am not the worst things that have happened to me. I am not a slave. I am free.” Like the runaway slave escaping the plantation and entering an unseen future, freedom results from a practice of wayfinding that offers us a side door into a joyful, just world.

Autumn offers us the tools to alchemize our collective suffering so we may practice more freedom. Through liberatory lessons around discipline, spiritual awakening, martial awareness, and embodied practice, we can begin to view our individual and collective wounds as a portal of transformation and liberation.