The Way of Tea and Justice: Rescuing the World's Favorite Beverage from Its Violent History by Becca Stevens

The Way of Tea and Justice: Rescuing the World's Favorite Beverage from Its Violent History Reviews

• 
  Moondance

  Very interesting book with lots of history about tea. The author's creation of Thistle Farm and Magdelene as a place for women recovering from abuse, addiction and prostitution makes for an interesting read. I particularly enjoyed the tea recipes at the beginning of each chapter.
• 
  Mary

  If ever a book's subtitle was going to grab you, this one certainly did the trick! “Rescuing the World's Favorite Beverage from its Violent History” . . . what a statement. Tea, justice, and a violent history? Just the title of this book gets you thinking. Yet, like so many things, it is what is seen when you look beyond the outside that holds so much meaning.
  
  Becca Stevens runs Thistle Farms, a safe place for recovering women to work and earn fair wages under good working conditions. Survivors of abuse, addiction, and prostitution, these courageous women have found new hope through Stevens' Magdalene residential ministry. Today, they join her in growing and selling natural products, and work in the new Thistle Stop Cafe, opened in 2013.
  
  In “The Way of Tea and Justice”, Reverend Stevens shares with us how tea has played a vital role in cultures around the world for thousands of years. Sadly, however, local workers, often women, were taken advantage of, forced to live in fear and poverty while trying to provide for their families. She shares her faith and how, even when things look bleak, there is always hope. She asserts that we should make more time to just sit with a cup of tea and ponder our lot, or simply just take a few minutes away from the stresses that command our attention throughout the day. She starts each section of her book with a recipe for a different type or flavor of tea to try at home.
  
  This book was released in November, 2014, and I found it fascinating. As a survivor of both childhood abuse from a brother, and an abusive first husband, I can relate to how the women of Thistle Farms must feel as they look to their futures, with hope for themselves and their children and grandchildren. If I am ever in Tennessee, I hope to visit the Thistle Stop Cafe, and share a cup of tea with these remarkable women. The book was published through Jericho Books/Hachette Book Group, ISBN: 9781455519026. Suggested retail price is $22.00.
• 
  William Stanger

  Like tea, this is a book that is best savoured when time is taken over it, allowing the words to sink in slowly and to diffuse into one's being.
  
  The book tells the story of how tea allowed the vision of Thistle Farms to evolve to add the Thistle Stop Cafe. Intertwined with this is the story of tea itself and how much it has meant to the life the author, Becca Stevens, herself. Also included are snippets of the stories of some of the many women whose lives have been turned around by the work of the Thistle Farms community.
  
  If you're looking for something exciting and filled with intrigue, this one is not for you. But if you are looking for something inspirational, the you can take your time with, then give this one a go.
• 
  Rachel

  Why I chose this book: I love Thistle Farms and I love tea, so I definitely wanted to read what Becca Stevens had to say about both.
  
  Thistle Farms works to help women recover from trafficking, prostitution, drug addiction and homelessness. After completing a residential program, women can work for the social enterprise that Thistle Farms runs which offers employment and skills to women. They opened a cafe, a second business (the first is making bath and body products), in 2013.
  
  The story of that opening, or rather vignettes and insights into that story, is the body of Steven's book. This book is about how we love and grow and help women to move beyond stories of trafficking and it is told through the lens of tea.
  
  If you want a book that is about life and full of thoughtful reflection and also has tea recipes and a many technical details about tea, this is the book for you. If you want a history of tea and not a lot of insight into the plight of women in the sex industry, this is not the book for you.
  
  I found lots of choice quotes and ideas in Steven's work and I also love Thistle Farms.
  
• 
  Marisa

  This was a DNF for me. I was expecting more history woven in with spiritual realizations, but I found it jumped around from stories of the women to history to repetition about tea that I found disappointing. It was lacking a cohesive theme that kept the narrative moving other than "tea is awesome!". I struggled through about 50 pages before deciding it just wasn't for me. The writing itself was decent quality and there was great potential in the story, but I don't feel that it was structured as well as it could have.
  
  See all my reviews and more at
  www.ReadingToDistraction.com or @Read2Distract
• 
  Leah Good

  This book was a Christmas gift from a friend whose church supports the ministry which the book speaks of. Both from my friend's reports and the pages of this book, the ministry sounds both needed and effective. Too often women engaged in prostitution are treated as perpetrators rather than victims. This ministry reaches out to women, often newly released from jail, to provide support, hope, and options.
  
  The heart of that mission is what I liked about this book. The execution of the writing was less enjoyable for me.
  
  The way the book unfolds felt a bit unfocused--part memoir, part devotional thoughts, part storytelling. If you like pretty words and meandering thoughts, you'd probably enjoy this. I prefer things to be a bit more coherent and to-the-point, so I found the style a bit frustrating.
  
  The theology and practice depicted is also a bit more progressive (the female author is an Episcopal priest) and broad (she talks about wishing she could read tea leaves--a fortune telling practice) than I ascribe to. This often left me distracted and uncomfortable instead of fully engaged in the central point of helping women recover from prostitution, trafficking, and addiction.
  
  Ultimately, I think the goals and pursuit of them depicted in this book are valuable and admirable. If what I've described doesn't bother you, you'll probably fully enjoy the book! If the topic matters to you but you're more like me in reading tastes and more conservative theology, you might prefer
  The White Umbrella: Walking with Survivors of Sex Trafficking.
• 
  Megan

  I found this book at the library, so I didn't know much besides what was on the cover when I started it. That was incredibly misleading, tbh, because while the book uses tea recipes to begin the chapters, and repeats the word 'tea' ad infinitum, there is very little *about* tea or it's history in this book, and saying that it's being 'rescued' from it's violent history is just nonsense. In fact, I'd argue that you could change 'tea' here to something else (coffee? cookies? hand-made shoes?) and have essentially the same book with no real editing required. It's essentially a mcguffin.
  
  Instead, this is made up mostly of the rambling thoughts of it's author as she (pretty vaguely) works towards opening a cafe at a women's halfway house. While it's not what the subtitle promises, that could be interesting, too, hearing about the struggles and processes of a non-profit expanding into a new area. But we don't get that, it's really more one person's musings about life and god etc while all that interesting stuff happens offstage and is occasionally briefly alluded to.
  
  I did like the (very) short segments written by the actual women from Magdalena, even though they seemed inserted fairly thoughtlessly throughout the book and appeared to have not been written for it (one in particular seemed like it was pulled from a newsletter or similar, for patrons).
  
  
• 
  Slim OysterHiatus

  This was not at all what I was expecting. I thought, and wanted, this to be a book about the history of tea production, highlighting the theft, colonialism, political injustices, and violent racism that made tea what it is today, and tell how Thistle Farms is working with women involved in tea picking, production, and sale to undo tea's violent and oppressive history, promote fair trade, and uplift women in the Magdelene program and around the world. Instead, this is a sort of diary tracing the author's spiritual thoughts as she deals with the successes and troubles of starting the Thistle Stop Cafe. There are testaments from women who found solace from abuse and homelessness through tea (though the anti-sexworker stance is misogynistic), and each chapter starts with a tea recipe that sets the tone and ties it together.
  I am not religious and detest spiritual woo-woo, so I want to be cynical about the book and its constant reference to scripture, but in truth I did find it a gentle and uplifting read. There are many axioms about tea that I agree with wholeheartedly, and appreciate looking at the world of the steeped leaf through a different lens.
• 
  Veronika

  This is not an enjoyable read. I've been trying for weeks to inch through it, but when I found a book-trade while travelling, I decided to swap it midway through. No point wasting time reading something you don't like. (Especially whilst abroad, hey?)
  
  I enjoyed the tea recipe at the beginning of each chapter, and I've learnt a bit of tea history I didn't know, but overall, 'Tea and Justice' doesn't know what kind of book it wants to be.
  
  It's all over the place. One second it's tea history, then Thistle Farms Café, then a weird analogy to tea that doesn't quite work, then a story of one of the women from Thistle Farms, then... A mess. It never felt fluid.
  
  There's a person for every book, so they say and I'm sure someone will enjoy it. But that person is not me, despite my love for tea.
• 
  Kaycie Atchison

  3.75/5
  
  I was grabbed by the title of the book while browsing. Turns out that the cafe in the book is in Nashville. The book followed the story of Becca opening a new tea cafe to help support her work with women rescued from addiction and trafficking. She had already opened a facility to make bath and body products to give these women a steady job in a trauma informed environment. The tea cafe was the next step.
  
  There was a lot of musing, winding threads, and a lot more preaching than I was expecting. The author is also a minister. It was more the way of the heart than the way of tea.
  
  Overall, it's written well and tells a compelling story. I was expecting more history, byt the history the book did contain was used mostly as a jumping off point instead of the theme.
• 
  Jessie Vandagriff

  Pros:
  In 2020 we all need a reminder that ministry is hard, it takes time and if we can slow down and connect to our purpose we can make it through.
  
  The snippets about hope and what it has meant for the women who have been helped
  
  Cons:
  It's much too repetitive. One can only expound upon the joys of tea so many times before it fills like filler
  I think a golden opportunity was wasted to highlight things that were more real. Unfortunately, this smacks of false narrative when with just a bit more sincerity and a bit less flowy nonsense it could have been really profound.
• 
  Jade

  Absolutely love this book. Each chapter starts with an introduction to a type of tea, its origin and/or how it’s brewed. Laced with testimonies, this book beautifully tells the story of Thistle Farms and Thistle Stop Cafe.
• 
  Angel

  I was very bored reading this book. I understand that I'm not the target audience, as a pagan enby teen, but I feel like a book like this should not have a target audience? It was also just very repetitive so :/ idk. Very boring.
• 
  Billie

  I love Becca Stevens' heart and vision and really enjoyed her musings on sharing tea with others as a form of connection and promotion of justice. It can be easy to get a little lost in her thought process at times but mostly I find myself both soothed and inspired by her words and wisdom.
• 
  Sheila

  Loved the thought behind the book and the way Becca tied the history of tea to abused women's struggles and how she bought it into women's recovery. I loved the recipes in the beginning of each chapter and the personal stories. The work that is being done at Thistle Farms is above amazing!
• 
  Jeremy Breedlove

  I’m sure this book is a lot better than a 2, and it’s my fault for judging by its cover, but I was excited to read a history of tea and by the time the author made it clear that she was going full tea is a metaphor for life and Jesus I could not switch gears to enjoy it
• 
  Sara

  What's hard about choosing a rating for this book is that it would alternate between 3 and 5 stars... but I don't think that makes it "average out" to a 4.
• 
  Susan

  Picked this gem up on a discount table . . . thoroughly enjoyed the read!
• 
  Deb O.

  I enjoyed the book but felt like it was two books rolled into one. On one hand the very important work and history of Thistle Farms and the other the history and social justice around tea.
• 
  Sloan Strickland

  One of my favorite books! History, justice, and self-care.
• 
  Alexa Doran

  The writing was nothing exquisite but the book gave me a new perspective on life which feels pretty damn invaluable to me.
• 
  Chris

  I wanted to like this book but found the reading stilted. It just didn't flow for me. I think her work is inspiring but found her writing style laborious.
• 
  Sheridan Hitchcox

  “Tea calls us to her altar and doesn’t discriminate or judge. It is truly a holy drink throughout the world. No other drink besides water carries such a claim or connects us so literally.”
• 
  Jessi

  In the stress of the holiday season, this has been a perfect read for me. Almost every sentence feels like something I should quote or stitch onto the proverbial pillow to review again and again. Becca Stevens uses the human rights violations in the history of tea to represent the former violence and victimization in the lives of the women that are being restored at the Magdalene rehabilitation center. Her dream is to create the Thistle Cafe to be both a symbol and physical living proof of the restoration in the lives of the women she is helping.
  
  The book reads as warm and cozy as any cup of rich, aromatic tea, and descriptions of various world teas along with recipes for properly preparing at serving them are woven into the fabric of the book, telling the story of the oppression and struggle for power that seem to be inherent in the preparation and selling of tea. The observant reader will appreciate the irony that Stevens has both symbolically and literally taken a stand against that history by using tea as a vehicle of healing for the victimized and marginalized prostitutes and addicts she reaches out to.
  
  As I learned in this beautifully poetic book, tea does have a violent history that is often overlooked as a force within itself. From the Boston Tea Party revolt to the abuses of England toward the tea producers in India, tea has literally rocked the world with its power. I'd like to say it's the addiction of the caffeine, but I can't be sure. It is obvious, however, that men have been addicted to the power and allure of tea for almost as long as the earth has existed.
  
  This book is both a deep and a comforting read. The perfectly chosen words that Stevens chooses are like a warm blanket on a cold day. At the same time, the reader is encouraged to think deeply about how they, the consumer, have a measure of power in what products they choose to buy, what production processes they are willing to accept. The average person feels little ability (or often doesn't see the need) to challenge the abuses of humanity by powerful corporations motivated solely by greed.
  
  I admire Stevens's idealism in the pursuit of truth and love in the way she is trying to harvest a lovely crop of women that have been to hell and are on the way back, healing others even as they are healed. It's a beautiful picture of how Christians are called to minister. I hope and pray that I can use my own story in such a powerful way.
  
• 
  Bonnye Reed

  XXX Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest and chaplain at St Augustine's at Vanderbilt University. Amoung others, she has been honored by the White House - one of fifteen Champions of Change in 2011, and the Small Business Council of America named her Humanitarian of the year 2014. Thistle Farms, her work for many years combatting violence against women in America, sells products from the farm in 380 stores nationwide. The women who farm on Thistle farms are women rescued from abusive childhoods, prostitution, drug abuse, jail time - and on the farms they have been able to get and keep a job, help build their own home, find respect for themselves and achieve peace.
  
  The Way of Tea and Justice is Becca Stevens step-by-step journey to set up Thistle Stop Cafe on Thistle Farms, taking her rescue of women in violent situations world wide. A few - not enough - tea brokers world wide are Fair Trade farmers - taking good care of the earth and their workers while producing tea for the world. Becca Stevens would have this number doubled and tripled, the families harvesting and processing teas making a living wage, in decent housing and able to afford medical care. And as a side benefit, she will be able to employ more women off the streets serving Fair Trade teas in the Thistle Stop Cafe. She just has to get it all lined up perfectly between the money men and the producers of tea and the tides of fate.
  
  This is an extraordinary look at a modern heroine. Her journey to attain this goal was not easy, but she makes it look like it was. And along the way, she shares with us the best ways to prepare teas, the difference in teas, the history of tea through time, and the ultimate cost of tea to peoples of the world. I found myself anxious to try new Fair Trade teas, and find a source for Thistle Farm craft items. You will, too.
• 
  Saba N Taylor

  The Way of Tea and Justice recounts the amazing journey of Becca Stevens and her group at thistle farms as they established a tea cafe to help women off the streets heal and rebuild their lives. Becca Stevens is a pastor and much of the book reflects the ups and downs of her journey and how her passion for justice and love for her faith kept her focused even through some very difficult times in her life. Her concept of tea as a way to heal sent her on a journey to learn more about the history and culture of tea.
  
  Her journey also took her across the globe as she visited tea farms around the world. She noticed the injustices against the tea laborers and began an effort called shared trade allowing for better wages and treatment of the labors while creating a business for women, other-wised not given a second chance by society, a safe way to heal and rebuild their lives. I enjoyed reading the many various aspects of tea history and tea culture Becca Stevens shared. I also enjoyed the heartwarming letters included in the book by various women who live and work at Thistle Farms. Many of their stories brought me to tears. I was moved by the love, hope and gratitude they shared in their letters.
  
  The book is very contemplative and Becca Stevens does a lot of reflecting on faith, love, family and as well she reflects on matters of social justice. Sometimes the writing felt a little long-winded and repetitive, but I guess that is the nature of this type of writing. Despite that, I enjoyed the journey of the building of the Thistle Stop Cafe.
• 
  Shelby Vcelka

  I really wanted to give this book five stars. Many of the passages were gorgeous, and put into words how I feel when I drink a cup of tea. For those passages alone, the book warrants five stars. However, the beautiful passages were framed by preachiness. The author is a reverend, and she makes sure to mention her Christian worship in almost every single chapter. One of the major themes running throughout the book was the universality of tea, and I feel that constantly inserting Jesus and Christianity nullifies the universal experience. Not everyone reading this book is a Christian, and it is extremely off-putting to hear about saints, God, Jesus, and The Spirit (note: I am Catholic, before anyone screams at me). Nowhere on the copyright page or the book flap does it mention religion or spirituality, so I was completely unprepared for the amount of religion in this book. It is interesting to note that the author does a quick sketch of the history of injustice in tea production, but fails to mention anything about how religion enabled these injustices.
  
  I highly approve of the author's mission and goals, and I am glad I have learned more about Thistle Farms. Hopefully, I can make a stop at the cafe sometime in the future, and donate a teacup. I would love to have a cup of tea with the brave women of Thistle Farms, since social justice and tea are two of my favorite things. :)
• 
  Melissa Dills

  I almost put down this book after about 50 pages. The writing is somewhat repetitive and cliched. We are given tons of abstractions and generalities, and disappointingly few concrete, grounding facts and details about history of tea. But then, I was looking for a cohesive look at tea and its ties to colonial exploitation as compared to its role in today's market, particularly the emerging contemporary free trade movement. However, that's not the book Stevens wrote. For her purposes, it's a fine book. There are some enjoyable passages, and many of her tea metaphors are striking (though a few miss their mark). Furthermore, the stories from the female survivors of addiction and exploitation are eye-opening. Stevens shares with us her vision of tea as a way for healing women, and therefore society as a whole, through love. For me, this vision and its fruition made The Way of Tea and Justice worth reading to the end.