Read / See / Do
Week of April 9, 2018
Read
1) The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.
2) All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies.
Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, "Joy," and, "Find Your Beach," Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith's own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive--and never any less than perfect company.
See
1) "Seeing Your Way to Civil Discourse" by Philippa Hughes by TEDxAmericanUniversity
Philippa Hughes is a Cultural Strategist and Creative Placemaker. She examines the personal transformation that follows from seeking discomfort and from living life with passion, generosity, curiosity, and boldness. After the 2016 election, she was taken by the vast divide in our country, and the lack of civil discourse. So she started hosting dinners with acquaintances from both sides of the aisle. Watch Phillipa explain how we can all see our way to civil discourse.
2) "Within Our Gates" by Oscar Micheaux
Within Our Gates (1920) is a silent race film that dramatically expresses the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro". The story focuses on an African-American woman who goes North in an effort to help a minister in the Deep South raise money to keep a school open for poor Black children. Her romance with a black doctor eventually leads to revelations about her family's past that expose the racial skeletons in America's closet, most famously through the film's depiction of a lynching. Produced, written and directed by novelist Oscar Micheaux, it is the oldest known surviving film made by an African-American director.
3) "Mustang" by Deniz Gamze Ergüven
This César Award-winning film is set in a remote Turkish village and depicts the lives of five young orphaned sisters and challenges they face growing up as girls in a conservative society. The event that triggers the family backlash against the five sisters at the beginning of the film is based on Ergüven's personal life.
Do
1) Support Equality For Flatbush, an anti-police repression and anti-gentrification organization
Equality for Flatbush does affordable housing, anti-gentrification and police accountability organizing in Brooklyn. The rapid gentrification of Brooklyn has led to rents going up, people are being displaced and small long-time mom and pop businesses are closing. Racial profiling and ticketing harassment due to Broken Windows policing grows worse every day. Equality for Flatbush has only two goals – to end police brutality and to stop the displacement of low to middle income people from our community due to gentrification. Learn more
2) Subscribe or donate to Words of Mouth, a newsletter that shares opportunity for employment
Founded by Rachel Meade Smith, Words of Mouth was conceived as an enriching and communal way to seek new opportunities—particularly for people working outside or between standard industry categories. The letter hosts listings culled from the public domain and individual submission, including those for employment, fellowships, residencies, funding, and publication. Learn more
3) Join your local SURJ (Showing Up For Racial Justice) chapter
The role of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) as part of a national multi-racial movement is to undermine white support for white supremacy and to help build a racially just society. SURJ believes in resourcing organizing led by people of color, and maintaining strong accountability relationships with organizers and communities of color as central part of our theory of change. Learn more
