The World Is Waiting for You

“The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don’t listen to them,” acclaimed author and award-winning journalist Anna Quindlen cautioned graduates of Grinnell College. Jazz virtuoso and educator Wynton Marsalis advised new Connecticut College alums not to worry about being on time, but rather to be in time—because “time is actually your friend. He don’t come back because he never goes away.” And in 2012 renowned physician and humanitarian Paul Farmer revealed to former Delaware co-eds his remarkable discovery-the new disease Empathy Deficit Disorder-and assured the commencers it could be cured. With more than a dozen contemporary graduation speeches that dissect the world as it is and imagine what it could be, The World Is Waiting for You brings forth the courageous people who’ve dared to transform the podium into a pulpit for championing peace, justice, protest, and a better world. The prescient, fiery feminism of Gloria Steinem sits parallel to science-fiction writer and embracer of darkness Ursula K. Le Guin, who asks, “What if I talked like a woman right here in public?” Legal and anti-poverty activist Bryan Stevenson enchants with stories of hope and unlikely triumph, while Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver asks those born into the Age of Irony to “imagine getting caught with your Optimism hanging out” and implores us always to act and speak the truth.