Live! From City Lights

Clarence Lusane reads from The Black History of the White House

On January 20th, 2011, City Lights welcomed Clarence Lusane reading from and discussing his latest book, The Black History of the White House.

About The Black History of the White House:

Official histories of the United States have ignored the fact that 25 percent of all U.S. presidents were slaveholders, and that black people were held in bondage in the White House itself. And while the nation was born under the banner of “freedom and justice for all,” many colonists risked rebelling against England in order to protect their lucrative slave business from the growing threat of British abolitionism. These historical facts, commonly excluded from schoolbooks and popular versions of American history, have profoundly shaped the course of race relations in the United States.

In this unprecedented work, Lusane presents a comprehensive history of the White House from an African American perspective, illuminating the central role it has played in advancing, thwarting or simply ignoring efforts to achieve equal rights for all. Here are the stories of those who were forced to work on the construction of the mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the determined leaders who pressured U.S. presidents to outlaw slavery, White House slaves and servants who went on to write books, Secret Service agents harassed by racist peers, Washington insiders who rose to the highest levels of power, the black artists and intellectuals invited to the White House, community leaders who waged presidential campaigns, and many others. Juxtaposing significant events in White House history with the ongoing struggle for civil rights, Clarence Lusane makes plain that the White House has always been a prism through which to view the social struggles and progress of black Americans.

Clarence Lusane is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the School of International Service at American University where he teaches and researches on international human rights, comparative race relations, social movements and electoral politics.

He is also an author, activist, scholar, lecturer, and journalist. For more than 30 years, he has written about and been active in national and international anti-racism politics, globalization, U.S. foreign policy, human rights and social issues such as education and drug policy. He has spent two years living in London conducting research on racism and human rights in Europe, and working with European institutions and NGOs.

His previous books include, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice: Foreign Policy, Race, and the New American Century,; Hitler’s Black Victims: The Experiences of Afro-Germans, Africans, Afro-Europeans and African Americans During the Nazi Era; Race in the Global Era: African Americans at the Millennium; No Easy Victories: A History of Black Elected Officials; African Americans at the Crossroads: The Restructuring of Black Leadership and the 1992 Elections; The Struggle for Equal Education; and Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs.

John Gibler reads from To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War

In conjunction with Global Exchange, John Gibler visited City Lights Bookstore on June 15th, 2011 to read and talk about his new book, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War.

Combining on the ground reporting and in-depth discussions with people on the front lines of Mexico’s drug war, To Die in Mexico tells behind-the scenes-stories that address the causes and consequences of Mexico’s multi-billion-dollar drug-trafficking business.

Gibler tells the hair raising stories of a Mexican journalist kidnapped, interrogated and threatened with death by the Gulf Cartel before being miraculously released; family members of people killed in the conflict; survivors of assassination attempts and massacres; along with crime-beat photographers, funeral parlor workers, government officials, convicted traffickers, cab drivers and others who find themselves working against, with, or for the drug cartels.

Gibler sees beyond the cops-and-robbers myths that pervade government and media portrayals of the unprecedented wave of violence and looks to the people of Mexico for solutions to the crisis now pushing Mexico to the breaking point.

John Gibler is a writer based in Mexico and California, the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt (City Lights Books, 2009), and a contributor to País de muertos: Crónicas contra la impunidad (Random House Mondadori, 2011). He is a correspondent for KPFA in San Francisco and has published in magazines in the United States and Mexico, including Left Turn, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, ColorLines, Race, Poverty, and the Environment, Fifth Estate, New Politics, In These Times, Yes! Magazine, Contralínea, and Milenio Semanal.

For the city-wide literary juggernaut known as Litquake 2010, City Lights brought two stewards of the writing world together in conversation: Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, and National Book Critics Circle member Oscar Villalon.

Founded in Paris by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton in 1953, The Paris Review began with a simple editorial mission: “Dear reader,” William Styron wrote in a letter in the inaugural issue, “The Paris Review hopes to emphasize creative work—fiction and poetry—not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines and putting it pretty much where it belongs, i.e., somewhere near the back of the book. I think The Paris Review should welcome these people into its pages: the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders. So long as they’re good.”

Decade after decade, the Review has introduced the important writers of the day. Adrienne Rich was first published in its pages, as were Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mona Simpson, Edward P. Jones, and Rick Moody. Selections from Samuel Beckett’s novel Molloy appeared in the fifth issue, one of his first publications in English. The magazine was also among the first to recognize the work of Jack Kerouac, with the publication of his short story, “The Mexican Girl,” in 1955. Other milestones of contemporary literature, now widely anthologized, also first made their appearance in The Paris Review: Italo Calvino’s Last Comes the Raven, Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus, Donald Barthelme’s Alice, Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries, Peter Matthiessen’s Far Tortuga, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Virgin Suicides, and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.

In addition to the focus on original creative work, the founding editors found another alternative to criticism—letting the authors talk about their work themselves. The Review’s Writers at Work interview series offers authors a rare opportunity to discuss their life and art at length; they have responded with some of the most revealing self-portraits in literature. Among the interviewees are William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Joan Didion, Seamus Heaney, Ian McEwan, and Lorrie Moore. In the words of one critic, it is “one of the single most persistent acts of cultural conservation in the history of the world.”

for more info visit: www.parisreview.com

Lorin Stein is former senior editor at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux where he has worked closely with such notable authors as Elif Batuman, Lydia Davis, Jeffrey Eugenides, Denis Johnson, Sam Lipsyte, Richard Price, and several others . He has also worked on translations of the work of the late Roberto Bolano, as well as personally translating the fiction of Gregoire Bouillier. He is the editor of The Paris Review.

Oscar Villalon is the former Book Editor for the San Francisco Chronicle. He has served as a member of the jury for the annual California Book Award and serves as a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Litquake is San Francisco’s annual literary festival that takes place each year in the month of October. Hundreds of authors participate in dozens of venues across town for what has become a much anticipated community event.

Daniel Alarcón

Daniel Alarcón brings together the world’s best contemporary writers—from Michael Chabon and Claire Messud to Jonathan Lethem and Amy Tan—engage in a wide-ranging, insightful, and often surprising roundtable discussion on the art of writing fiction. Drawing back the curtain on the mysterious process of writing novels, The Secret Miracle brings together the foremost practitioners of the craft to discuss how they write. Literary stars like Paul Auster, Roddy Doyle, Allegra Goodman, Aleksandar Hemon, Mario Vargas Llosa, Susan Minot, Rick Moody, Haruki Murakami, George Pelecanos, Gary Shteyngart, and others take us step by step through the alchemy of writing fiction, answering everything from nuts-and bolts queries—”Do you outline?”—to perennial questions posed by writers and readers alike: “What makes a character compelling?”

Daniel Alarcón is the author of Lost City Radio, which was named a 2007 Best Book by the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and others. He lives in Oakland, CA.

 

Essayist, author, and anti-racism activist Tim Wise discusses his new book Colorblind: The Rise of Post Racial Politics and the Retreat From Racial Equity, published by City Lights Books.

Ever since the civil rights movement, voices on the liberal left have advocated a retreat  color-conscious public policies such as affirmative action, and even from open discussion of racism as a key factor in the perpetuation of racial inequity in the United States. They have argued that the barriers faced by black and brown Americans are largely divorced from racism, and that these stem, instead, from economic factors such as deindustrialization, capital flight from the cities, spiraling healthcare costs and inadequate funding for education, jobs programs, and other programs of social uplift. From this starting point, they contend that “universal” programs intended to help the poor and working class are the best means for narrowing the racial inequalities with which the nation is still plagued.

In the first book to discuss the pitfalls of “colorblindness” in the Obama era, Tim Wise argues against colorblindness and for deeper color-consciousness in both public and private practice. We can only begin to move toward authentic social and economic equity through what he calls illuminated individualism—acknowledging the diverse identities that have shaped our perceptions and the role that race continues to play in the maintenance of disparities between whites and people of color in the United States today.

 

Elif Batuman reads from The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the people who read them, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

No one who read Elif Batuman’s first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. “Babel in California” told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel’s last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel’s secret influence on the making of King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature.

Batuman’s subsequent pieces—for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the London Review of Books— have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva.

Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence—including her own.

Elif Batuman was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. She now lives in Twin Peaks, San Francisco (near the radio tower). She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Prize. She teaches literature at Stanford University.

Jeffrey Haas discusses The Assassination Of Fred Hampton from Lawrence Hill Books

The Assassination of Fred Hampton is Jeffrey Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Fred Hampton’s assassins, ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy. Not only a story of justice delivered, the book puts Fred Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.

praise for the book:

“A riveting account of the assassination, the plot behind it, the attempted cover-up, the denouement and the lessons that we should draw from this shocking tale of government iniquity.”  —Noam Chomsky, author and political activist

“A remarkable work.”  —Studs Terkel

“A true crime story and legal thriller, this powerful account puts together all the pieces, step by step, giving us the anatomy of a despicable episode in recent American history. The writing is clear and straightforward; the overall impact devastating.” —Phillip Lopate, author of Getting Personal

“This is an extremely important book–and a tale well told–for America to read if it wants to become what it says it has always been—the land of the free and the home of the brave.”  —Ramsey Clark, lawyer and former United States Attorney General

Jeffrey Haas is an attorney and cofounder of the People’s Law Office, whose clients included the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society, community activists, and a large number of those opposed to the Vietnam War. He has handled cases involving prisoners’ rights, Puerto Rican nationalists, protestors opposed to human rights violations in Central America, police torture, and the wrongfully accused.

Joel Schalit discusses Israel vs. Utopia a collection of essays from Akashic Books.

Isreal is a synonym for many things, the ancestral home of the Jewish people, the hell of the Palestinians; the realization of a centuries-old dream of freedom, and the heart of the War on Terror. No country inspires as much debate about its rights and wrongs, its legitimacy and illegitimacies, than Israel. Historically associated with Europe, such debate finally became common in the U.S. during the Bush era, as America deepened its involvement in the region, and Israel fought three wars.

In his new book, Isreal Vs. Utopia, Israeli American journalist Joel Schalit distinguishes between the Israel he knows, and the image of it that exists in the imagination of Americans. Israel is a state of mind, Schalit argues, as much as it is its own sovereign state. Exploring this tension, in America, in Israel, employing a combination of personal observation, political, and cultural commentary, Schalit defines the instability of Israel, as a metaphor, and America’s troubled love for it, as only an Israeli American would know.

Joel Schalit is a writer and editor based in Milan, Italy. The author of the critically-acclaimed Jerusalem Calling, and the editor of several collections including The Anti-Capitalism Reader, Schalit has edited some of America’s most influential independent magazines, including Punk Planet, Tikkun, and the legendary ’90s e-zine, Bad Subjects. His work has also appeared in AlterNet, the Forward, the Guardian and XLR8R. Schalit currently comments on Mideast politics for French global news broadcaster France 24, and is the culture editor of the New York Jewish periodical, Zeek. A member of the post-rock duo Elders of Zion, he is presently working on the band’s third album, Donkeys of the Earth.

 

Rebecca Brown reads from her new collection of essays American Romances, published by City Lights Books

This collection of mordant, poignant and playful essays shows Rebecca Brown at the height of her imaginative and intuitive powers. A wry and incisive social and literary critique is couched in a gonzo mix of pop culture, autobiography, fiction, literary history, misremembered movie plots and fantasy that plays with the notion of what it is to be “American.”

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Rebecca Brown, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, and Robert Gluck celebrate the release of Life As We Show It: Writing On Film, edited by Brian Pera and Masha Tupitsyn and published by City Lights.

Life As We Show It is a dynamic cross-genre collection that uses short stories, essays, and poetry to explore the cinematic experience. In these innovative writings, the movie-viewer relationship is positioned as protagonist, theme and plot, and most importantly, as a new genre in its own right.