Hello!
As always, we hope the past week has been productive, exciting, restorative, invigorating, educational, wondrous, and literary. That being said, we are exhausted by the current scourge of anti-book rhetoric sweeping the country. As an organization determined to champion the value of sharing stories from diverse voices... we are a bit peeved, to say the least. We thought we were past this!
Below are a few links to familiarize yourself with some of the misguided efforts being made to ban books on race, sexuality, LGBTQ+ history, and the like. We implore you to stand up for the value of books and for the right to share all stories. Whether through conversations with your grandparents or calls to your local senator, every person has the power to remind those around them just how important books are. It's through these small, daily reminders that we can push back and speak up.
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Litquake Weekly Highlighting literary news, upcoming events, and whatever else we're looking at...
“Books are inseparable from ideas, and this is really what is at stake...” Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a refreshing perspective on the book banning cases taking place across the U.S. • The New York Times
“MoAD and the Lorraine Hansberry Theater present: ‘The DePriest Incident’ online reading.” A reading with MoAD, a show at The Marsh, and tons of other ways to celebrate Black History Month in the Bay Area • Datebook
“Many of the books under fire are newer titles, purchased by school librarians in recent years as part of a nationwide movement to diversify the content available to public school children.” Books on race and sexuality are targeted in the latest wave of book banning from Texas • NBC
“I, a slow reader, will never get to all the words I long to read, but I will relish the ones before me.” A reminder that it's better to read at your own pace than not at all • Catapult
“But she says challenges like these aren’t only coming from the right—and that in some ways, the fallout this time is missing the point.” A school board in Tennessee bans Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus. • Slate
“He showed up at the Williamsburg club on Saturday. They were doing spoken word... His words struck and peeled off the happy haze of alcohol.” A man from Wall Street goes to see some poetry • Mint Lounge |
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Litquake Book Recs In which we convince one of our favorite writers to recommend a must-read book...
Forrest Gander recommends An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky, translated from the German by Jackie Smith.
“Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses is not a predictable sad enumeration of disappearing species, but a thrilling literary meditation—via a series of strikingly original and formally various essays—on the nature of memory as it concerns say, the extinct Caspian Tiger, the poems of Sappho, or the historical traces of an island that has disappeared.”
Thanks, Forrest!
You can buy Forrest Gander's latest poetry collection Twice Alive here (or at your local bookstore). |
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