Joyful Revolution
Poverty, Social Justice, and the Story of Mary Rabagliati
by Diana Skelton
Paperback (No longer our product)
(October 2025)
ISBN: 9780718898304
Price: $36.00
On back order
At the age of 20, Mary Rabagliati (1942-1992) quit a secretarial job in London to move to an emergency housing camp in France without running water or any sanitation facilities. It was 1962 when, amongst that bleak squalor and deprivation, she began a lifelong commitment to anti-poverty work and fighting for the human rights of people on the margins of society, working towards a vision that no one should have to live a life trapped by poverty. She joined fellow trailblazer Joseph Wresinski to build the foundations for ATD Fourth World to develop into an international human rights movement. Particularly committed to the girls and women whose horizons were drastically curtailed by hardship, early motherhood, and domestic violence, Mary’s work took her across continents: living alongside families in poverty; speaking out at the United Nations; and helping to spark a joyful revolution for social justice. Drawing from her own personal experiences with Mary as mentor and housemate, Diana Skelton’s deeply insightful and enriching biography Joyful Revolution provides the opportunity for Mary’s distinctive voice to be heard in her native language for the first time, allowing people who never met this remarkable woman to discover her story. Filled with anecdotes, correspondence, journal entries, and more, this biography is a testament to the impact Mary Rabagliati had on the lives around her. As she said, ‘In the misery of poverty, joy matters even more […] so that people excluded from society can finally join in everything that makes the world extraordinary.’
Diana Skelton has spent her life on anti-poverty and human rights work, both living in low-income communities, and at the United Nations. A Policy and Practice Associate Editor for the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, Skelton has served as Deputy Director General of ATD Fourth World, a non-profit organisation she joined when she was 19 years old. This book was edited by Kate Evans, author of the Donna Morris crime series (published by Constable). A writer for over forty years, her work ranges from poetry, to fiction and non-fiction. She is currently working on a Thrutopia novel, a type of ‘speculative’ fiction which looks to a more hopeful future where humans rediscover their place in nature and live more in harmony with each other.
- By (author) Diana Skelton
Similar Books
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Dis/United States of Vulnerability
Literary and Cultural Transgressions in U.S. Poetry Since the 1960s
Volume 330
European Drama and Performance Studies
Dramatisations politiques. Théâtre, politique et idéologie au XIXe siècle (1806-1914)
Volume 27
Food Security under Armed Conflict
Global Knowledge Landscape and Public Attention to Social, Economic, and Humanitarian Dimensions
Innovationes Lovanienses: Arts, Law and Theology at the University of Louvain (1425–1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 2
Volume 18
Modernization, Crises, Cultural Revolutions
Yugoslavia’s 1960s and 1970s through the amateur film lens
Myths and Tales of the Inughuit
Erik Holtved's Polar Eskimo Texts Revised and Re-translated into Danish and English
Volume 475, 12
Students, Scholars and Their Books at the University of Louvain (1425-1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 1
Volume 17