Ancestral Performance Art

Forthcoming in June 2025—now available for pre-order

by Alissa Schwartz

How can we work effectively to dismantle racism and other social inequities if we do not first examine and rework our origin stories? A remembered and reimagined ancestry is integral to social transformation.

The practice of Ancestral Performance Art utilizes familial and ancestral history for the purpose of communal thriving and liberation. It is the examination of family stories told and retold, and the surfacing of ones never recounted.

Alissa Schwartz’s previous book, Organizational Performance Art, laid out a framework for offering productive possibilities and space for joy in the workplace. In Ancestral Performance Art, Schwartz shares the intimate work of witnessing and holding space with a dying parent; uncovering and reinterpreting racist and separatist practices within her white Jewish family; and the twinning and untwinning and twinning again she experiences with her mother, all in the service of equitable culture-building. The Workbook section at the end of the book offers tools and prompts to help you make your own Ancestral Performance Art.

Available from the Impeller Press shop and selected retailers

US$20
128pp / 5x6” / paperback
Impeller Press Books B-009
ISBN 9781967136995