Litseen

Virtual: Susan Nguyen, Felicia Zamora, Mai Der Vang
2021-09-13 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books 9th Avenue, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94122, United States
Join us on Monday, September 13th at 6pm PT when Susan Nguyen is joined by Mai Der Vang and Felicia Zamora for a reading celebrating her debut collection, Dear Diaspora, on Zoom!
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_QylrXyjITH2FjW2LW5ZmHg
Praise for Dear Diaspora
“Dear Diaspora is a capacious and wholly felt account of a speaker’s contending with place and memory. Susan Nguyen’s gorgeous book maps out the longing of a particular Vietnamese immigrant experience—in its main character, the adolescent Suzi—and also captures, through its documentary research, a collection of voices of Vietnam War refugees in the aftermath. Against a backdrop of love and desire is the search to knit together a place of belonging and origin, rooted both in the sensual world and in the realm of the imagination. Dear Diaspora is a heartbreaking and breathtaking debut.”—Cathy Linh Che, author of Split
“Susan Nguyen, in Dear Diaspora, asks: ‘At the center of your calamity, what grows?’ Nguyen’s gorgeously rendered poems answer that question with language and imagination. There’s devastation in this book—an absent father figure, displacement of the speaker, a fragmented Vietnamese diaspora, but out of this devastation emerges beauty. The speaker in this book collects broken things such as cicada wings that become whole in her rich internal world. Nguyen’s talent is palpable from the first line, and what a gift this book is. In her poem ‘Grief as a Question,’ Nguyen writes: ‘no one told me grief could be so ordinary.’ But out of grief and woundedness emerges a voice that is anything but ordinary.”—Victoria Chang, author of Obit
“‘Last night I had the American dream,’ Nguyen writes, puncturing the dream bubble in which ‘America’ exists as the only and inevitable state of success and belonging. In this collection, diaspora, specifically Vietnamese diaspora, is verdant and lush—suffused with green light, mustard greens, grass and trees—blooming through the drought of American love for Nguyen’s speakers. The poems in Dear Diaspora offer us a lexicon we’ve needed to imagine how we might arrive at and receive one another better in land and language, in memory and touch.”—Natalie Diaz, author of Postcolonial Love Poem
About Dear Diaspora
Dear Diaspora is an unapologetic reckoning with history, memory, and grief. Parting the weeds on a small American town, this collection sheds light on the intersections of girlhood and diaspora. The poems introduce us to Suzi: ripping her leg hairs out with duct tape, praying for ecstasy during Sunday mass, dreaming up a language for buried familial trauma and discovering that such a language may not exist. Through a collage of lyric, documentary, and epistolary poems, we follow Suzi as she untangles intergenerational grief and her father’s disappearance while climbing trees to stare at the color green and wishing that she wore Lucy Liu’s freckles.
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Dear Diaspora scrutinizes our turning away from the trauma of our past and our complicity in its erasure. Suzi, caught between enjoying a rundown American adolescence and living with the inheritances of war, attempts to unravel her own inherited grief as she explores the multiplicities of identity and selfhood against the backdrop of the Vietnamese diaspora. In its deliberate interweaving of voices, Dear Diaspora explores Suzi’s journey while bringing to light other incarnations of the refugee experience.
About Susan Nguyen
Susan Nguyen hails from Virginia but currently lives and writes in the desert. She earned her MFA in Poetry from Arizona State University, where she won the Aleida Rodriguez Memorial Prize and fellowships from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. In 2018, PBS NewsHour named her one of “three women poets to watch.” Her work appears in diagram, Tin House, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, Dear Diaspora, won the 2020 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Visit her at www.susanpoet.com.
About Felicia Zamora
Felicia Zamora is a poet, educator, and editor currently living in OH. She is the author of six books of poetry including: I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize released from the University of Iowa Press in April 2021, Quotient forthcoming from Tinderbox Editions in 2021, Body of Render, winner of the 2018 Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press (2020), Instrument of Gaps (Slope Editions, 2018), & in Open, Marvel (Parlor Press, 2018), and Of Form & Gather, winner of the 2016 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (University of Notre Dame Press). She’s received fellowships and residencies from CantoMundo, Ragdale Foundation, PLAYA, Moth Magazine, and Noepe Center at Martha’s Vineyard, authored two chapbooks, won the 2019 Wabash Prize for Poetry and the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun Prize, and was the 2017 Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, CO. Her poems and essays are found or forthcoming in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, American Poetry Review, Boston Review online, Georgia Review, Guernica, Literary Hub, Missouri Review Poem-of-the-Week, Orion, POETRY, Poetry Daily, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, The Nation, and others. She is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and is the associate poetry editor for the Colorado Review.
About Mai Der Vang
Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), and Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in Poetry, and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, she served as a Visiting Writer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Tin House, the American Poetry Review, among other journals and anthologies. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, espnW, and elsewhere. Mai Der also co-edited How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology with the Hmong American Writers’ Circle. A Kundiman fellow, Mai Der has completed residencies at Civitella Ranieri and Hedgebrook. Born and raised in Fresno, California, she earned degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.

Babylon Salon presents Anna North, Vince Granata, Tonya M. Foster, Mia P. Manansala and Zoe FitzGerald Carter
2021-09-11 17:00 - 18:00 | online, CA, United States
Booksmith is thrilled to partner with Babylon Salon for their Fall event, featuring readings by Anna North, Vince Granata, Tonya M. Foster and Mia P. Manansala, with music by Zoe Fitzgerald Carter!
Please note: this is a free, virtual event. Zoom information will soon be announced here.

About the authors
Anna North is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of two previous novels, America Pacifica and The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, which received a Lambda Literary Award in 2016. She has been a writer and editor at Jezebel, BuzzFeed, Salon, and the New York Times, and she is now a senior reporter at Vox. She grew up in Los Angeles and lives in Brooklyn. Order her books: Outlawed and The Life and Death of Sophie Stark.
Vince Granata received his BA in history from Yale University and his MFA in creative writing from American University. He has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, the I-Park Foundation, and the Ucross Foundation, and residencies from PLAYA and the MacDowell Colony. His work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Chattahoochee Review, and Fourth Genre, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and listed as Notable in Best American Essays 2018. Order his book: Everything is Fine.
Tonya M. Foster is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, and the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; and coeditor of Third Mind: Creative Writing through Visual Art. Her writing and research focus on ideas of place and emplacement, and on intersections between the visual and the written. She is an editor at Fence Magazine, and at The African-American Review. Her poetry, prose, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Tripwire, boundary2, MiPOESIAS, NYFA Arts Quarterly, the Poetry Project Newsletter, and elsewhere. Tonya is a recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ford and the Mellon Foundations, from NYFA; and has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts and at the Macdowell colony. Her next collections are a cross-genre collection on New Orleans—A Mathematics of Chaos::Thingification (forthcoming from Ugly Presse 2021), and Monkey Talk, a cross-genre series about race, paranoia, aesthestics, and surveillance. She is an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts. Order her book, A Swarm of Bees in High Court
Mia P. Manansala (MAH-nahn-sah-lah) (she/her) is a writer and book coach from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. She uses humor (and murder) to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, queerness, and her millennial love for pop culture. She is the winner of the 2018 Hugh Holton Award, the 2018 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, the 2017 William F. Deeck – Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers, and the 2016 Mystery Writers of America/Helen McCloy Scholarship. She’s also a 2017 Pitch Wars alum and 2018-2020 mentor. A lover of all things geeky, Mia spends her days procrastibaking, playing JRPGs and dating sims, reading cozy mysteries, and cuddling her dogs Gumiho, Max Power, and Bayley Banks (bonus points if you get all the references). Her debut novel, Arsenic and Adobo, came out May 4, 2021 with Berkley/Penguin Random House and is the first in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series. Order her book, Arsenic and Adobo.
Zoe FitzGerald Carter is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Salon and Vogue. Imperfect Endings won first place in the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association’s literary contest, was excerpted in O magazine and chosen as a finalist for the National MS Society’s Books for a Better Life Awards in the “Inspirational Memoir” category. It was also a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Zoe is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, where she teaches memoir. She has also taught (and run) writing workshops from Hawaii to Vermont, and currently teaches memoir and songwriting at Left Margin Lit in Berkeley, CA. In the last couple of years, she’s been focusing on her career as a musician. Her first CD, Waiting for the Earthquake came out in 2017 and can be found on all the streaming platforms. Her new album, Waterlines, was released in 2021. Order her book, Imperfect Endings.

Please note: this is a free, virtual event. Zoom information will soon be announced here.

Erin Gordon with Michael Krasny - Peeps
2021-09-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Book Passage Corte Madera, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
Book Passage Presents
Sat., September 11, 2021 • 1:00pm PT • Corte Madera Store
In conversation with Michael Krasny
BUY THE BOOK

This event will be hosted in-person at Book Passage’s Corte Madera location

A coming-of-middle-age novel, Peeps tells the story of Meg, a 51-year-old podcaster who has spent her life afraid of “what ifs.” After an unexpected divorce, Meg might finally have the chance to obtain what she calls a Big Life, but isn’t sure she can pull it off. After her mother’s death, Meg gathers the courage to seek answers from her uncle about her disinterested and cruel mother. To get to him, she moves out of her Santa Monica home and drives across the country in a new RV she nicknames Irv.
Along her journey, Meg conducts interviews for her podcast called Peeps, in which she asks everyday people the same seven questions to “peep” into their lives and uncover shared humanity. Meg’s narrative is peppered with lively transcripts of her interviews with the ordinary yet fascinating people she meets. The podcast enables Meg to process the complicated grief and relief related to her mother’s death, her divorce, and her only child leaving home for college.
Peeps is evocative of The Wizard of Oz and Wild; like Dorothy and Cheryl—and many middle-aged women—Meg seeks to find her place in the world. Discerning readers will enjoy spotting the subtle references and symbols from both iconic stories.
The author of smart and moving book club fiction, Erin Gordon is a former lawyer and legal affairs journalist. A Bay Area native with degrees from both UC Berkeley and Stanford, Gordon’s novels explore themes of friendship, parenthood and self-discovery.
Michael Krasny is the former host of the award winning KQED Forum, a program discussing news and public affairs, current events, culture, health, business and technology.

Nomadic Press Virtual Open Mic #75
2021-09-10 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States
90 minutes
30 readers
3 minutes each
On Zoom!
FREE AND ALL WELCOME!
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We have a short goal for the evening of $150.
Pandemic times continue in 2021 and we continue to gather our community virtually across state and country lines. Join us to read, join us to listen. All are welcome.
Hosted by Nazelah Jamison (with Tula Biederman on tech). It’s a continuing experiment, and we hope you can join us!
Our safe space process still applies to our collective virtual space, so please read this by visiting https://www.nomadicpress.org/safespaceprocess.
Zoom Joining Info
Topic: Nomadic Press’ Weekly Virtual Open Mic
Time: Jan 1, 2021 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Every week on Fri, until Dec 10, 2021, 50 occurrence(s)
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Weekly: https://us02web.zoom.us/…/tZcudeqoqjIiE9fnl7dxuB…/ics…
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Offsite: Tinder Live! with Lane Moore at Rickshaw Stop
2021-09-09 20:00 - 22:00 | Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St., San Francisco, 94102
Join us on Thursday, September 9 at 8pm PT when author and comedian Lane Moore brings her hilarious Tinder Live! show to San Francisco’s beloved Rickshaw Stop!
Book sales provided by Green Apple Books
$20 standing adv / $25 limited seated adv (SOLD OUT) / $30 doors
This is an All Ages show
All attendees must be fully vaccinated and be able to show proof (card, phone, or QR code). Let’s keep everyone safe and sound during this return to live shows!*
About Tinder Live!
Tinder Live has been named one of the best comedy shows in NYC for good reason. Produced and hosted by NYC based comedian, Lane Moore (The Onion, Brooklyn Magazine’s “50 Funniest People In Brooklyn,” former Cosmopolitan Magazine sex & relationships editor, and author of #1 bestseller, How To Be Alone: If You Want To And Even If You Don’t, praised as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, New York Magazine, NPR, Fast Company, Marie Claire, and many others), Tinder Live is a totally improvised, anything-can-happen interactive comedy showstopper with helpful and oftentimes ridiculous Tinder tips, tricks, real-time swiping, and messaging (and sometimes even real-time phone calls with Tinder matches)! You’ll relate to Moore’s live-swiping and laugh at her reactions and find inspiration in her ridiculous, random emoji-filled messages (and sometimes even phone calls!) to would-be suitors. It’s also a great show to attend with a date, Tinder or otherwise.
But don’t expect cheap shots…this show has a huge heart. In between laughs, Lane reminds us how challenging it can be to find a match in the digital age. Even if you’ve never been on an online dating site, you will love this show.
“Tinder LIVE! is truly addictive entertainment…[it’s] ingenious. Moore transforms the banter on a dating app into compelling long-form improvisation. Ms. Moore, a cagey and humane performer, has developed an instinct for turning the raw materials of sexually charged chat with ordinary strangers into honed and generous jokes. “TinderLive” has a comic momentum and energy that is unusual. The way she manipulates tone and pace reveals an artist supremely confident in her form, not to mention a flirt par excellence.” –The New York Times.

Maggie Nelson
2021-09-09 19:00 - 20:00 | online, CA, United States
In conversation about her new book, On Freedom

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Thursday, September 9, 2021 – 7:00pm

Crowdcast

Tickets:

Sliding scale ($0-$100)

Award-winning poet, critic, and author Maggie Nelson joins us to discuss her latest book, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (Graywolf Press). Conversation partner TBD.
“[Maggie Nelson] traces the limits of liberty and the call to care in this expansive and sharp-eyed study. . . . Nelson turns each thought until it is finely honed and avoids binaries and bromides. While the literary theorizing is rich, this account soars in its ability to find nuance in considering questions of enormous importance. . . . Once again, Nelson proves herself a masterful thinker and an unparalleled prose stylist.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About On Freedom
An expansive, exhilarating work of criticism by one of the most significant writers of our day
So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom’s long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept’s complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
Drawing on a vast range of material, from critical theory to pop culture to the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, Maggie Nelson explores how we might think, experience, or talk about freedom in ways responsive to the conditions of our day. Her abiding interest lies in ongoing “practices of freedom” by which we negotiate our interrelation with—indeed, our inseparability from—others, with all the care and constraint that entails, while accepting difference and conflict as integral to our communion.
For Nelson, thinking publicly through the knots in our culture—from recent art-world debates to the turbulent legacies of sexual liberation, from the painful paradoxes of addiction to the lure of despair in the face of the climate crisis—is itself a practice of freedom, a means of forging fortitude, courage, and company. On Freedom is an invigorating, essential book for challenging times.
About Maggie Nelson
Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic, and award-winning author of The Argonauts, Bluets, The Art of Cruelty, Jane: A Murder and The Red Parts. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Reimagine Candlelight Vigil with Poet Victoria Chang
2021-09-09 17:00 - 18:30 | online, CA, United States
Thursday, September 9
8:00pm–9:30pm EDT

This is a digital event. You should receive information in your ticket or from the host about how to join online.

Free
RSVP

At this month’s Reimagine Candlelight Vigil, our special guest is award-winning poet Victoria Chang. Let’s honor our loved ones and celebrate the transformation of loss into creativity.

Reimagine has been hosting candlelight vigils throughout the pandemic in order to break down taboos and hold space for all that we’ve lost. At this special gathering, poet and writer Victoria Chang will read her work, revisit themes explored in Reimagine’s Asian American Table Talk series, and discuss the power of writing to discover meaning amidst grief and trauma.
Victoria Chang
Victoria Chang is the author of the forthcoming Dear Memory (Milkweed Editions, 2021), a collection of literary letters and mementos on the art of remembering across generations. Her poetry books include OBIT, Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, and Circle. OBIT received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the PEN Voeckler Award; it was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize, and was long-listed for the National Book Award. She is also the author of a children’s picture book, Is Mommy?, illustrated by Marla Frazee and named a New York Times Notable Book, and a middle grade novel, Love, Love. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a Katherine Min MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles and is the program chair of Antioch University’s low-residency MFA program.

TYPE:
RITUAL & CEREMONYTALK, PANEL, & CONVERSATIONWRITING & LITERATURECOMMUNITY GATHERINGCELEBRATION & REMEMBRANCE

TRACK:
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENTCOVID-19GRIEF

Sandra Cisneros, Martita, I Remember You
2021-09-08 19:00 - 20:00 | online, CA, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz is delighted to welcome acclaimed and bestselling author Sandra Cisneros for a ticketed online event celebrating her new book, Martita, I Remember You / Martita, te recuerdo.
Tickets for this special event will go on sale soon.
A long-forgotten letter sets off a charged encounter with the past in this poignant and gorgeously told tale masterfully told by Sandra Cisneros, the celebrated bestselling author of The House on Mango Street, in a beautiful dual-language edition.
As a young woman, Corina leaves her Mexican family in Chicago to pursue her dream of becoming a writer in the cafes of Paris. Instead, she spends her brief time in the City of Light running out of money and lining up with other immigrants to call home from a broken pay phone. But her months of befriending panhandling artists in the subway, sleeping on crowded attic floors, and dancing the tango at underground parties are given a lasting glow by her intense friendships with Martita and Paola. Over the years the three women disperse to three continents, falling out of touch and out of mind—until a letter unearthed in a closet brings Corina’s days in Paris back with breathtaking immediacy.
Told with intimacy and searing tenderness, this tribute to the life-changing power of youthful friendship is Cisneros at her vintage best, in a beautiful dual-language edition.
Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer, and artist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, several honorary doctorates, and national and international book awards, including Chicago’s Fifth Star Award, the PEN America Literary Award, and the National Medal of Arts. Most recently, she received the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, was recognized among the Frederick Douglass 200, and won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. In addition to her writing, Cisneros has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two nonprofits she founded: the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. She is also the organizer of Los MacArturos, Latino MacArthur fellows who are community activists.

9th Ave: Shruti Swamy with Meng Jin
2021-09-07 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Join us on Tuesday, September 7th at 6pm PT when Shruti Swamy joins us to discuss her debut novel, The Archer, with Meng Jin at 9th Ave!

Masks Required for In-Person Attendance
Register at the link below to join us online
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_yBzAFdhjR2aJms0xtt-VkQ

Can’t join us in person but want a personalized copy?
Order your copy of The Archer here by September 7, write who you would like the book made out to in your order comment, and we will handle the rest!
Your order will ship after the event date.

Praise for The Archer
“This novel swallowed me whole. The Archer is the kind of book you always hope for: lush and sensual, tasted and felt, with striking images that play out like film behind the eyes. Swamy evokes an India that resists flat stereotype and teems with exuberance, beauty, and life. The Archer is timeless yet utterly modern as it asks what it means for a woman to make a life of art.”
—C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold
“Shruti Swamy is a writer to celebrate. Her fiction is provocative, precise, and gorgeously inventive.”
—Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
“This is a singular work, a story of a dancer, and of a hungry self seated at the table of womanness and desire and art, told with unparalleled originality and elegance. Swamy writes with a thrilling clarity of vision that wakes the sleepwalker right into joyful consciousness. Every word is intimate, honest, ecstatic—utterly alive.”
—Meng Jin, author of Little Gods
About The Archer
Kiese Laymon called Shruti Swamy’s debut book of stories, A House Is a Body, “one of the greatest short story collections of the 2020s.” Now, Swamy brings us an accomplished and immersive coming-of-age novel set in the Bombay of the 1960s and 1970s.

As a child, Vidya exists to serve her family, watch over her younger brother, and make sense of a motherless world. One day she catches sight of a class where the students are learning Kathak, a precise, dazzling form of dance that requires the utmost discipline and focus. Kathak quickly becomes the organizing principle of Vidya’s life, even as she leaves home for college, falls in love with her best friend, and battles demands on her time, her future, and her body. Can Vidya give herself over to her art and also be a wife in Bombay’s carefully delineated society? Can she shed the legacy of her own imperfect, unknowable mother? Must she, herself, also become a mother?

Intensely lyrical and deeply sensual, with writing as rhythmically mesmerizing as Kathak itself, The Archer is about the transformative power of art and the possibilities that love can open when we’re ready.

About Shruti Swamy
Shruti Swamy is the author of the story collection, A House Is a Body, which was a finalist for the Pen/Robert Bingham Prize, the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction, and longlisted for the Story Prize. Her work has been published by the Paris Review, McSweeney’s, and anthologized in the O. Henry Prize Stories. Her debut novel, The Archer, will be published by Algonquin Books in September 2021. She lives in San Francisco.

Nomadic Press Virtual Open Mic #74
2021-09-03 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Ishmael Reed
2021-09-02 17:00 - 18:00 | online, CA, United States
Discusses her latest book, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

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Thursday, September 2, 2021 – 5:00pm

Crowdcast

Tickets:

Sliding scale ($0-$100)

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of the modern classic An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, joins us to discuss her latest book of historical reckoning, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion (Beacon Press). Roxanne will be joined in conversation by legendary writer Ishmael Reed,
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a one-woman wrecking ball against the tower of lies erected by generations of official and television historians—people who make a living glorifying slave traders and exterminators of Native Americans.”—Ishmael Reed
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About Not “A Nation of Immigrants”
Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today.
She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity—founded and built by immigrants—was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good‑-but inaccurate–story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception.
While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and a historical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.
About Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma in a tenant farming family. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than 4 decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. Dunbar-Ortiz is the winner of the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and is the author or editor of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, a recipient of the 2015 American Book Award. She lives in San Francisco. Connect with her at reddirtsite.com or on Twitter @rdunbaro.
Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty-five books including Mumbo Jumbo, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, Conjugating Hindi, Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico and most recently Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues and The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda. He is also a publisher, television producer, songwriter, radio and television commentator, lecturer, and has long been devoted to exploring an alternative black aesthetic: the trickster tradition, or Neo-Hoodooism. A regular contributor to CounterPunch and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over thirty years, retiring in 2005. Reed is the only person to be nominated for the National Book Award in two categories in the same year.

Virtual event: Angela Chen and Sherronda J. Brown on Asexuality Possibilities
2021-09-01 18:00 - 19:00 | San Francisco Public Library – Virtual Library
Register for the Zoom event https://bit.ly/Asexuality09-01-21 or watch on live on YouTube.

Presented by the San Francisco Public Library and The Booksmith: Angela Chen, author of Ace, and Sherronda J. Brown discuss asexuality, the little-known sexual orientation, and what all of us can learn–about desire, identity, culture, and relationships–when we use an asexual lens to see the world.
Angela Chen is the author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, which was selected as one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR. Her reporting and essays have also appeared in publications like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Paris Review, Lapham’s Quarterly, and more.
Sherronda J. Brown (she/they) is a Southern-grown essayist, editor, and storyteller with a focus on media analysis and cultural critique, currently serving as the Editor-in-Chief of Wear Your Voice Magazine. In addition to writing and thinking about asexuality, their special interests include Blackness and queerness in horror narratives.

Pussypedia: Zoe Mendelson and Maria Conejo with Carol Queen
2021-08-30 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books 9th Avenue, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94122, United States
JOIN US ON MONDAY, AUGUST 30 AT 6PM PT WHEN ZOE MENDELSON AND MARIA CONEJO JOIN US TO DISCUSS THEIR BOOK, PUSSYPEDIA: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE, ON ZOOM!
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4hyhD6DYRHiEfUP_YY3ogw
Praise for Pussypedia
“Not since the 1973 publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves has there been a book about our sexual selves that is so incisive, so inclusive, so frank—and so funny. Pussypedia is more than just a book about pussies, it is a brilliant manifesto about living with one. Zoe Mendelson and Maria Conejo have created a multi-faceted masterpiece that should be read—and memorized—by every body.”—Debbie Millman, author of Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits
“Pussypedia is a hilarious, ridiculously informative and absolutely necessary atlas for people with pussies. From pussy anatomy to sex and masturbation and all things in between, Mendelson takes an inclusive and intersectional approach to demystifying all things pussy. This book is a joyful, frank, and comprehensive corrective to the cultural ignorance surrounding people with pussies. If pussy is the promised land,
this book is the compass that will guide you there.”—Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger
“A thorough and empowering guide to women’s health…. [Mendelson] kicks body shame to the curb and, in delightfully sassy prose, keeps things realistic….Conejo’s bright illustrations, peppered throughout, add flair. [Those] looking to ditch the shame will find this smart, inclusive, and practical guide the perfect resource.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)
About Pussypedia
Written by the creators of the popular website, this rigorously fact-checked, accessible, and fully illustrated guide is essential for anyone with a pussy.
If the clitoris and penis are the same size on average, why is the word “small” in the definition of clitoris but strangely missing from the definition of penis? Sex probably doesn’t cause yeast infections? But racism probably does cause BV? Why is masturbating so awesome? How hairy are butt cracks . . . generally? Why is labiaplasty on a global astronomical rise? Does egg freezing really work? Should I stick an egg-shaped rock up there or nah?
There is still a shocking lack of accurate, accessible information about pussies and many esteemed medical sources seem to contradict each other. Pussypedia solves that with extensive reviews of peer-reviewed science that address old myths, confusing inconsistencies, and the influence of gender narratives on scientific research––always in simple, joyful language.
Through over 30 chapters, Pussypedia not only gives the reader information, but teaches them how to read science, how to consider information in its context, and how to accept what we don’t know rather than search for conclusions. It also weaves in personal anecdotes from the authors and their friends––sometimes funny, sometimes sad, often cringe-worthy, and always extremely personal––to do away with shame and encourage curiosity, exploration, and agency.
A gift for your shy niece, your angsty teenager, your confused boyfriend, or yourself. Our generation’s Our Bodies, Ourselves, with a healthy dose of fun.
About the Authors
Zoe Mendelson: Journalist, information designer, content strategist. Her writing has appeared in Fast Company, WIRED, Hyperallergic, Slate, Next City, the LA Times. Her projects have been covered by The New York Times en Espanol, New York Magazine, CityLab, PBS, Univision, and Buzzfeed. Previous projects include official emojis for Mexico City, a data narrative about drones, and a civic-engagement platform for nihilist millennials. Mendelson studied at Barnard College in New York City.
Maria Conejo: Visual Artist from Fine Arts School in Mexico. Her main media is drawing, her work revolves around female bodies representation. She has been awarded with the national grant FONCA twice in the program JOVENES CREADORES. She was finalist in the first Biennial of Illustration in Mexico, organized by Pictoline and The New York Times. Her work has been shown at SWAB Art Fair Barcelona, De Kooning Studio in NYC in 2019, at Juxtapoz Club House in Art Basel Miami and Salon Acme 6 Art Fair in Mexico City in 2018.

Book Release: The Move by Keith Donnell Jr.
2021-08-28 18:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us to celebrate the release of The Move, Keith Donnell Jr.’s first full-length collection of poetry!
Lineup of readers and musician to be announced soon.
Preorder your copy of The Move here: https://www.nomadicpress.org/store/themove
About the book: Keith Donnell Jr. taps a cultural archive of voices, forms, and intergenerational absence. His poems, so connected by difference, speak across time, place, and persona, always reaching toward song and the dream of a fluid, indestructible beating Black heart. The Move puts the cold out and keeps it there.
Zoom Joining Info
Topic: Book Release: The Move by Keith Donnell Jr.
Time: Aug 28, 2021 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Kim Shuck
2021-08-28 15:00 - 16:00 | online, CA, United States
JOIN US ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 28 AT 3PM PT WHEN ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ IS JOINED BY KIM SHUCK TO DISCUSS HER LATEST BOOK, NOT A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS: SETTLER COLONIALIS, WHITE SUPREMACY, AND A HISTORY OF ERASURE AND EXCLUSION, ON ZOOM!
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cl7qzn9tT12C-s5NKUouog
Praise for Not a Nation of Immigrants
“In this book, a precious gift drawn from an amazingly rich life and a prodigious life of learning, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz urges us to disavow the violence of the US settler nation-state, its discursive erasures of native peoples and its material relations of dispossession. The struggle for workers’ rights and working-class solidarity, she reminds us, involves the fight against capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism for the liberation of all peoples.”
—Gary Y. Okihiro, author of Third World Studies: Theorizing Liberation
“What do the Iroquois or Navajo think of the Statue of Liberty? With characteristic grit and brio, Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrates how profoundly the settler colonial history of the United States and the ideology of ‘white nativism’ have shaped both immigration policy and immigrant identity.”
—Mike Davis, author of Prisoners of the American Dream
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a one-woman wrecking ball against the tower of lies erected by generations of official and television historians—people who make a living glorifying slave traders and exterminators of Native Americans.”
—Ishmael Reed
About Not a Nation of Immigrants
Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today.
She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity—founded and built by immigrants—was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good‑-but inaccurate—story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception.
While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and a historical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.
About Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma in a tenant farming family. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than 4 decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. Dunbar-Ortiz is the winner of the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and is the author or editor of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, a recipient of the 2015 American Book Award. She lives in San Francisco.

Nomadic Press Virtual Open Mic #73
2021-08-27 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States

On Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration
2021-08-26 19:00 - 20:30 | Virtual
With the second renaissance and re-emergence of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, the general public and therapists alike are confronted with new areas of exploration, but with few systematic frameworks available. Questions surrounding legal access to care, ongoing criminalization, and medical restrictions to care limiting the therapies available, the immediate future of psychedelic-assisted therapy remains shrouded in uncertainty, even in the face of expanding interest. On the cusp of this new era-one of excitement but also uncertainty-one of many ways to explore this emerging landscape is through the lens of the psychospiritual and the therapeutic uses of psychedelics.
Join clinical psychologist, founder of the Center for Existential Exploration, and author Dr. Kile Ortigo and licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and social justice advocate Mary Sanders for a conversation on the psychospiritual and therapeutic use of psychedelics, which includes the process of psychedelic integration. Sharing insights from his latest book, Beyond the Narrow Life, Dr. Ortigo discusses the shared elements of intersecting complexities and possibilities surrounding questions regarding legal access to care, ongoing criminalization, and medical restrictions to care which limit the therapies available. Dr. Ortigo examines themes elicited by the psychospiritual and therapeutic use of psychedelics through several frameworks, from third-wave cognitive-behavioral therapy to Jungian depth psychology, existentialism to scientific understandings of the cosmos, and mindfulness and compassion focused traditions to popular and secular culture.
Dr. Ortigo offers deepened wisdom into psychedelic-assisted therapy and integration through his unique approach of connecting to the greater mysteries and concerns of the human experience.
Free, suggested donation of $20.
https://www.ciis.edu/public-programs/event-calendar/ortigo-kile-august-26-2021 publicprograms@ciis.edu 415-575-6175

Michelle Ruiz Keil / Summer in the City of Roses
2021-08-26 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Booksmith is thrilled to host Michelle Ruiz Keil again for her second novel, Summer in the City of Roses. More to be announced soon, but save the date and join us!
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.
You can order Summer in the City of Roses here and we’ll ship it directly to you (or hold for pickup at our San Francisco shop).
We are happy to fulfill orders anywhere in the world – international postage will be invoiced separately. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact events@booksmith.com.
About the book
Inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia and the Grimm fairy tale “Brother and Sister,” Michelle Ruiz Keil’s second novel follows two siblings torn apart and struggling to find each other in early ’90s Portland.
All her life, seventeen-year-old Iph has protected her sensitive younger brother, Orr. But this summer, with their mother gone at an artist residency, their father decides it’s time for fifteen-year-old Orr to toughen up at a wilderness boot camp. When their father brings Iph to a work gala in downtown Portland and breaks the news, Orr has already been sent away against his will. Furious at her father’s betrayal, Iph storms off and gets lost in the maze of Old Town. Enter George, a queer Robin Hood who swoops in on a bicycle, bow and arrow at the ready, offering Iph a place to hide out while she tracks down Orr.
Orr, in the meantime, has escaped the camp and fallen in with The Furies, an all-girl punk band, and moves into the coat closet of their ramshackle pink house. In their first summer apart, Iph and Orr must learn to navigate their respective new spaces of music, romance, and sex-work activism—and find each other before a fantastical transformation fractures their family forever.
Told through a lens of magical realism and steeped in myth, Summer in the City of Roses is a dazzling tale about the pain and beauty of growing up.

About the author
Michelle Ruiz Keil is a Latinx writer and tarot reader with an eye for the enchanted and a way with animals. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, All of Us With Wings, was called “a transcendent journey” by The New York Times. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Michelle has lived in Portland, Oregon, for many years. She curates the fairytale reading series All Kinds of Fur and lives with her family in a cottage where the forest meets the city.

An Evening with Judith Ayn Bernhard and silvi alcivar
2021-08-25 19:30 - 20:30 | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
Judith Ayn Bernhard will read selections from her new book of stories, Marriages (Andover Street Archives Press, 2021), followed by an interview with poet silvi alcivar.

Virtual Event: Marc Anthony Richardson and Carolina de Robertis
2021-08-25 18:00 - 19:00 | online
Join us on Wednesday, August 25th at 6pm PT when Marc Anthony Richardson joins us to discuss his novel, Messiahs, with Carolina de Robertis on Zoom!
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_cqwbFFuBQIS0qvGhukkbow
Praise for Messiahs
“Messiahs is a fever dream of storytelling. It explores racism and interracial conflict, the deadly prison industrial complex, climate emergency, social death, and more in prose that unfurls like waves of sound. Bleak, though not without hope, challenging, though with numerous rewards along the way, innovative from start to finish, Messiahs is a marvel.”
—John Keene, MacArthur Fellow and author of Annotations and Counternarratives
“In Messiahs, Marc Anthony Richardson gives us an innovative, intelligent, and insightful take on several American obsessions, including punishment, incarceration, and the death penalty. As much as this layered narrative presents a warning about things to come, it also offers a profound examination of rebirth, redemption, second-acts. All in all an unnerving, uncanny, and challenging read on many levels, but well worth the effort.”
—Jeffery Renard Allen, Guggenheim Fellow and author of Rails Under My Back and Song of the Shank
About Messiahs
A fiercely ecstatic tale of betrayal and self-sacrifice.
Messiahs centers on two nameless lovers, a woman of east Asian descent and a former state prisoner, a black man who volunteered incarceration on behalf of his falsely convicted nephew, yet was “exonerated” after more than two years on death row. In this dystopian America, one can assume a relative’s capital sentence as an act of holy reform-“the proxy initiative,” patterned after the Passion. The lovers begin their affair by exchanging letters, and after his release, they withdraw to a remote cabin during a torrential winter, haunted by their respective past tragedies. Savagely ostracized by her family for years, the woman is asked by her mother to take the proxy initiative for her brother-creating a conflict she cannot bear to share with her lover. Comprised of ten poetic paragraphs, Messiahs’ rigorous style and sustained intensity equals agony and ecstasy.
About Marc Anthony Richardson
Marc Anthony Richardson is author of Year of the Rat, winner of an American Book Award, and is the recipient of a Creative Capital Award, a PEN America grant, and a Hurston/Wright fellowship. He teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Iván Argüelles and Solomon Rino
2021-08-25 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Iván Argüelles and Solomon Rino celebrate their new book of poetry
Field Hollers
published by Luna Bisonte Prods
—————
This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.
———-
Event is free, but registration is required
(Click Here) to register.
———–
(Click Here) to purchase book. (link to be posted soon!)
—————
FIELD HOLLERS is the collaboration of pre-dawn poets Solomon Rino and Iván Argüelles. It represents the call-and-response of two disembodied voices from opposite sides of the Bay, voices that demand a scrupulous account of the raison d’etre of existence. Though supposedly separate the twin/voices become seamless and one.
Innovative Mexican-American poet Iván Argüelles is the author of numerous works, notably “That” Goddess, Hapax Legomenon, Madonna Septet, and Comedy , Divine , The . Among recently published works are Fragments from a Gone World, Tamazunchale, and Diario di un ottogenario. The long arc of his life has taken him from Mexico DF to Minnesota Chicago Italy Brooklyn and finally Berkeley. A retired librarian, he worked at the New York Public Library and the Library UC Berkeley. Usually associated with the surrealists, his work has deep roots in the classics as well as modernists such as Pound and Joyce. A bilingual edition of the translation of some of his poems is in preparation.
Solomon Rino is a playwright, poet, book artist and publisher. His first book was an ethnography of Tibetan ritual tradition, Deity Men, Reb gong Tibetan Trance Mediums in Transition. He translated from the Hungarian Miklos Radnoti’s Bor Notebook as A Wiser, More Beautiful Death. He edited and designed the book, Like an eye in the hand of a beggar by Leopoldo Maria Panero, translated by Arturo Mantecón. He edits the annual journal Second Stutter representing significant voices in contemporary poetry.

Lucas Bessire and William DeBuys
2021-08-24 18:00 - 20:00
Anthropologist Lucas Bessire and novelist and conservationist William DeBuys join us for a virtual event about their new books, Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains (Princeton UP) and The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss (Seven Stories Press). The two will discuss the increasingly imperiled water supply in the western U.S. and ways to confront the difficult challenges of the climate emergency.
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains
“Bessire’s Running Out masterfully shifts among scales and genres and in doing so lets the personal, the historic, and the geologic reveal their intimacies and competing urgencies. A beautiful and unusual book, and wholly original.” –Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch
The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.
Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family lived as irrigation farmers and ranchers, to try to make sense of this vital resource and its loss. His search for water across the drying High Plains brings the reader face to face with the stark realities of industrial agriculture, eroding democratic norms, and surreal interpretations of a looming disaster. Yet the destination is far from predictable, as the book seeks to move beyond the words and genres through which destruction is often known. Instead, this journey into the morass of eradication offers a series of unexpected discoveries about what it means to inherit the troubled legacies of the past and how we can take responsibility for a more inclusive, sustainable future.
An urgent and unsettling meditation on environmental change, Running Out is a revelatory account of family, complicity, loss, and what it means to find your way back home.
About The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss
“The Trail to Kanjiroba is a transformative path on the page by one of America’s most eloquent writers. Bill deBuys has written a walking prayer about beauty, hope, and longing in the service of human dignity and a living planet. Though set in Nepal in the high altitude grace of Dolpo, this is a spiritual pilgrimage contemplating the journey from grief toward love. Hands pressed together, I hold these words close and bow.”–Terry Tempest Williams
In 2016 and 2018 acclaimed author and conservationist William deBuys joined extended medical expeditions into Upper Dolpo, a remote, ethnically Tibetan region of northwestern Nepal, to provide basic medical services to the residents of the region. Having written about climate change and species extinction, deBuys went on those journeys seeking solace. He needed to find a constructive way of living with the discouraging implications of what he had learned in recent years about the diminishing chances of reversing the damage humans have done to Earth–a way of holding onto hope in the face of devastating loss. As deBuys describes these journeys through one of the earth’s most remote regions, his writing celebrates the staggering natural beauty and biodiversity he finds there, and gives his readers a history lesson of two scientific discoveries–evolution and plate tectonics–that forever changed sapiens’ understanding of our planet. Written in a lush and nuanced style evocative of Paul Theroux or Peter Matthiessen, The Trail to Kanjiroba offers a surprising and revitalizing new way to think about Earthcare, one that may enable us to continue the difficult work that needs to be done.
About the authors
William deBuys is the author of ten books, including The Last Unicorn, one of Christian Science Monitor’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2015; River of Traps, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Pulitzer Prize nonfiction finalist; The Walk (an excerpt of which won a Pushcart Prize in 2008); and A Great Aridness. In 2008-2009 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in New Mexico.
Lucas Bessire is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and the author of Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in conversation with Alejandro Murguía
2021-08-24 18:00 - 20:00
discussing Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s
Not A Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion
published by Beacon Press
Debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States.
———-

This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.
———-
Event is free, but registration is required
(CLICK HERE) to register.
———–
(CLICK HERE) to purchase book. (link coming soon!)
———–
Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today.
She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity—founded and built by immigrants—was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good—but inaccurate—story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception.
While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and a historical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma in a tenant farming family. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than 4 decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. Dunbar-Ortiz is the winner of the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and is the author or editor of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, a recipient of the 2015 American Book Award. She lives in San Francisco. Connect with her at reddirtsite.com or on Twitter @rdunbaro.
Alejandro Murguía is the author of Southern Front and This War Called Love (both winners of the American Book Award). His non-fiction book The Medicine of Memory highlights the Mission District in the 1970s during the Nicaraguan Solidarity movement. He is a founding member and the first director of The Mission Cultural Center. He was a founder of The Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, and co-editor of Volcán: Poetry From Central America. Currently he is a professor in Latina Latino Studies at San Francisco State University. He is the author of the short story “The Other Barrio” which first appeared in the anthology San Francisco Noir and recently filmed in the street of the Mission District. In poetry he has published Spare Poems, and this year a new collection Native Tongue. He is the Sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate and the first Latino poet to hold the position.
Praise for Not A Nation of Immigrants
“In this book, a precious gift drawn from an amazingly rich life and a prodigious life of learning, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz urges us to disavow the violence of the US settler nation-state, its discursive erasures of native peoples and its material relations of dispossession. The struggle for workers’ rights and working-class solidarity, she reminds us, involves the fight against capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism for the liberation of all peoples.”
—Gary Y. Okihiro, author of Third World Studies: Theorizing Liberation
“Not ‘a Nation of Immigrants’ challenges to the core one of the most dominant narratives about the United States, as a country founded by and welcoming for immigrants. Dunbar-Ortiz’s captivating and accessible historical account forces a reckoning with the various layers of the US imperialist project, from territorial control to economic and political influence at the expense of Black populations, migrants, and Indigenous peoples. This myth-shattering book addresses one of the most pressing challenges of our time by demonstrating the implications of White supremacy across time, across groups and spaces, and the connections between them. If there is hope for transformation, it is through the careful, systematic work that this book exemplifies by examining the roots of racism and structural inequality, and bringing forward alternative narratives and movements. It is a must-read.”
—Alexandra Délano, chair and associate professor of global studies, The New School
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has produced a remarkable, engrossing, and readable reexamination of US history. She unites an analysis of the construction of ‘race’ and racism, with the construction of settler colonialism, demonstrating both the historical inaccuracy as well as the strategic blind spot created by thinking of the USA as a ‘nation of immigrants.’ But she does more. Dunbar-Ortiz links the construction of the US as a racial settler state with the growth of US imperialism, decisively demonstrating that global expansion was not accidental nor a matter of policy alone, but the direct outcome of the DNA of the racial settler state.”
—Bill Fletcher Jr., trade unionist and author of “They’re Bankrupting Us!” And Twenty Other Myths About Unions
“What do the Iroquois or Navajo think of the Statue of Liberty? With characteristic grit and brio, Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrates how profoundly the settler colonial history of the United States and the ideology of ‘white nativism’ have shaped both immigration policy and immigrant identity.”
—Mike Davis, author of Prisoners of the American Dream
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a one-woman wrecking ball against the tower of lies erected by generations of official and television historians—people who make a living glorifying slave traders and exterminators of Native Americans.”
—Ishmael Reed
“This book is meticulously researched and written with eloquence and passion. With it, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, one of our preeminent radical historians, once again delivers a powerful and provocative indictment of settler colonialism and white nationalism, which were foundational in building this country. It could not be more timely. A must-read history for our troubling present.”
—Barbara Ransby, author of Making All Black Lives Matter
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s incisive book Not ‘a Nation of Immigrants’ challenges the multicultural myth of US nationalist triumphalism and, instead, powerfully exposes settler colonialism, wars of conquest, and white nationalism as central pillars of immigration. This is a must-read to finally discard unquestioning settler American liberalism and patriotism.”
—Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
“Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz rightly argues that the United States is not ‘a nation of immigrants’ but, more accurately, a nation of colonizers. A must-read.”
—Nick Estes (Lakota), author of Our History Is the Future
“We are here because you were there. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz methodically unravels the pernicious myth of ‘a nation of immigrants,’ standing in the way of collective well-being on this continent and beyond.”
—Manu Karuka, author of Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad
“Once again, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrates why she is one of the foremost historical scholars we have today, and Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants’ is her most crucial offering yet, opening new insights on this country’s sordid history of systemic oppression, exclusion, and erasure. If we look honestly at ourselves, as human beings occupying this specific slice of space and time together, we see that Dunbar-Ortiz is giving us a thoroughly researched and genuine road map for what we can become, if we dare. Vital reading for anyone with two eyes, a brain, and a beating heart.”
—Tim Z. Hernandez, author of All They Will Call You
“Simply put, if you read this book and learn its lessons, you will have to change everything you think about the history of the United States and the terms we use to fight for justice. It’s your call, but I suggest you put the book in your basket and head for the check-out counter right now.”
—Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States
“From being deeply shaken and disturbed, to ultimately feeling exhilarated and optimistic by Dunbar-Ortiz’s conclusion and ‘call to arms,’ this is a paradigm-shifting work. Dunbar-Ortiz eviscerates ‘the benevolent version of US nationalism’ by showing how the United States has always sought to enlist its new arrivals as accomplices to colonial conquest and mass murder. There is a reckoning on every page of this liberating book.”
—Patrick Higgins, anti-imperialist historian and activist
“Placing settler colonialism at the center, Dunbar-Ortiz untangles the meaning of immigration in a settler state based on the elimination of the Native population. The book traces a ‘self-indigenizing narrative’ by which white immigrants laid claim to the country, turning an aggressive white nationalism into the foundation of US identity. European immigrants became American, and became white, Dunbar-Ortiz shows, by adopting the country’s settler identity. In a tour de force that takes readers from the American Revolution to nineteenth-century New Mexico to contemporary Appalachia to Hamilton and Donald Trump, she shows how different groups of immigrants assimilated into a settler identity that perpetuates US racism and militarism. The book also makes clear that a superficial ‘multicultural’ approach to revising US history still fails to tackle the heart of the problem: colonialism. You will never look at US history the same way after reading Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants.’”
—Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

Nomadic Press Virtual Open Mic #77
2021-08-24 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States

Lucas Bessire and William DeBuys
2021-08-24 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
In conversation about drought, extinction, and ways forward

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Tuesday, August 24, 2021 – 6:00pm

Crowdcast

Tickets:

Sliding scale ($0-$100)

Anthropologist Lucas Bessire and novelist and conservationist William DeBuys join us for a virtual event about their new books, Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains (Princeton UP) and The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss (Seven Stories Press). The two will discuss the increasingly imperiled water supply in the western U.S. and ways to confront the difficult challenges of the climate emergency.
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains
“Bessire’s Running Out masterfully shifts among scales and genres and in doing so lets the personal, the historic, and the geologic reveal their intimacies and competing urgencies. A beautiful and unusual book, and wholly original.” –Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch
The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.
Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family lived as irrigation farmers and ranchers, to try to make sense of this vital resource and its loss. His search for water across the drying High Plains brings the reader face to face with the stark realities of industrial agriculture, eroding democratic norms, and surreal interpretations of a looming disaster. Yet the destination is far from predictable, as the book seeks to move beyond the words and genres through which destruction is often known. Instead, this journey into the morass of eradication offers a series of unexpected discoveries about what it means to inherit the troubled legacies of the past and how we can take responsibility for a more inclusive, sustainable future.
An urgent and unsettling meditation on environmental change, Running Out is a revelatory account of family, complicity, loss, and what it means to find your way back home.
About The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss
“The Trail to Kanjiroba is a transformative path on the page by one of America’s most eloquent writers. Bill deBuys has written a walking prayer about beauty, hope, and longing in the service of human dignity and a living planet. Though set in Nepal in the high altitude grace of Dolpo, this is a spiritual pilgrimage contemplating the journey from grief toward love. Hands pressed together, I hold these words close and bow.”–Terry Tempest Williams
In 2016 and 2018 acclaimed author and conservationist William deBuys joined extended medical expeditions into Upper Dolpo, a remote, ethnically Tibetan region of northwestern Nepal, to provide basic medical services to the residents of the region. Having written about climate change and species extinction, deBuys went on those journeys seeking solace. He needed to find a constructive way of living with the discouraging implications of what he had learned in recent years about the diminishing chances of reversing the damage humans have done to Earth–a way of holding onto hope in the face of devastating loss. As deBuys describes these journeys through one of the earth’s most remote regions, his writing celebrates the staggering natural beauty and biodiversity he finds there, and gives his readers a history lesson of two scientific discoveries–evolution and plate tectonics–that forever changed sapiens’ understanding of our planet. Written in a lush and nuanced style evocative of Paul Theroux or Peter Matthiessen, The Trail to Kanjiroba offers a surprising and revitalizing new way to think about Earthcare, one that may enable us to continue the difficult work that needs to be done.
About the authors
William deBuys is the author of ten books, including The Last Unicorn, one of Christian Science Monitor’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2015; River of Traps, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Pulitzer Prize nonfiction finalist; The Walk (an excerpt of which won a Pushcart Prize in 2008); and A Great Aridness. In 2008-2009 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in New Mexico.
Lucas Bessire is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and the author of Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life.

Jaime Lowe and Kim Kelly
2021-08-24 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books 9th Avenue, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94122, United States
JOIN US ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 24 AT 6PM PT WHEN JAIME LOWE JOINS US TO DISCUSS HER LATEST BOOK, BREATHING FIRE, WITH KIM KELLY ON ZOOM!
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_s8BbIIRxTX6p–3bdGWVmA
About Breathing Fire
A dramatic, revelatory account of the female inmate firefighters who battle California wildfires.
Shawna was overcome by the claustrophobia, the heat, the smoke, the fire, all just down the canyon and up the ravine. She was feeling the adrenaline, but also the terror of doing something for the first time. She knew how to run with a backpack; they had trained her physically. But that’s not training for flames. That’s not live fire.
California’s fire season gets hotter, longer, and more extreme every year — fire season is now year-round. Of the thousands of firefighters who battle California’s blazes every year, roughly 30 percent of the on-the-ground wildland crews are inmates earning a dollar an hour. Approximately 200 of those firefighters are women serving on all-female crews.
In Breathing Fire, Jaime Lowe expands on her revelatory work for The New York Times Magazine. She has spent years getting to know dozens of women who have participated in the fire camp program and spoken to captains, family and friends, correctional officers, and camp commanders. The result is a rare, illuminating look at how the fire camps actually operate — a story that encompasses California’s underlying catastrophes of climate change, economic disparity, and historical injustice, but also draws on deeply personal histories, relationships, desires, frustrations, and the emotional and physical intensity of firefighting.
Lowe’s reporting is a groundbreaking investigation of the prison system, and an intimate portrayal of the women of California’s Correctional Camps who put their lives on the line, while imprisoned, to save a state in peril.
About Jaime Lowe
Jaime Lowe is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and other national publications, and has appeared regularly on This American Life, RadioLab, and NPR. She is the author of Mental and Digging for Dirt and has taught writing at Wallkill Correctional Facility. Born and raised in California, she lives in New York City.
About Kim Kelly
Kim Kelly is a regular labor columnist for Teen VOGUE and the author of Fight Like Hell, a book of intersectional labor history, which will be published next year. She’s written about labor, class, politics, and culture for the New Republic, the Washington Post, the Baffler, and Esquire, among other publications. She’s a member of the Industrial Workers of the World’s Freelance Journalist Union as well as an elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE). Kelly is based in Philadelphia.

Afternoon Literary Seminar: A Month In The Country by J. L. Carr
2021-08-24 13:00 - 14:30
THIS SESSION IS ONLINE
A Month In The Country by J. L. Carr
Kimberly has been trying to get this slim novella into your hands for over a year! After supply issues, Carr is now ours to discuss. The perfect short novel for the waning days of the summer, A Month concerns an English man who spends a month post World War I restoring a painting in a small country church. This prose is just so gorgeous and the story is intriguing—not to say downright strange. It will be so good to pull apart the ingenious elements of this gem. Make the most of the dog days with this delicious escape.
(For those of you who will have read Brideshead Revisited in the summer intensive, the two will provide a super interesting study in contrasts and similarities.)
There are several ticket options that include books with purchase, books shipped to home, books picked up at Kepler’s Books or seminar only. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor all shipping costs will be waived for the literary seminars. The books should be read prior to the meeting date.

Beth Morgan and Jean Kyoung Frazier
2021-08-23 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
JOIN US ON MONDAY, AUGUST 23 AT 6PM PT WHEN BETH MORGAN JOINS US TO DISCUSS HER DEBUT NOVEL, A TOUCH OF JEN, WITH JEAN KYOUNG FRAZIER ON ZOOM!
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_tG9Brd46Qsm15Z_rda5AKQ
Praise for A Touch of Jen
“A Touch of Jen is bananas good. Funny and sharp and surprising and bittersweet. Just [three chef’s kiss emojis].”
—Carmen Maria Machado
“Morgan has created a fabulous monster here, legitimately Frankensteined herself a wicked, unflinching, dynamite novel out of razor-sharp dialogue, toxic social media culture, and the nonsense notion that the self is just another brand to be endlessly plumbed for content. Wildly hilarious and absolutely terrifying, A Touch of Jen is truly a touch of genius. I loved every minute of it.”
—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of WITH TEETH and MOSTLY DEAD THINGS
“Morgan’s got swagger. A Touch of Jen will draw you in with its electric rhythm and razor-sharp wit, but it will make you stay with its wild, beating heart. I came for the blood-thirsty monsters, I left moved by Morgan’s deep understanding of the day-to-day absurdity and pain of 21st century existence. A banger of a debut and the arrival of a bold new voice in fiction.”
—Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of PIZZA GIRL
About A Touch of Jen
A young couple’s toxic Instagram crush spins out of control and unleashes a sinister creature in this twisted, viciously funny, “bananas good” debut. (Carmen Maria Machado)
“Um, holy shit…This novel will be the most fun you’ll have this summer.” —Emily Temple, Literary Hub
Remy and Alicia, a couple of insecure service workers, are not particularly happy together. But they are bound by a shared obsession with Jen, a beautiful former co-worker of Remy’s who now seems to be following her bliss as a globe-trotting jewelry designer. In and outside the bedroom, Remy and Alicia’s entire relationship revolves around fantasies of Jen, whose every Instagram caption, outfit, and new age mantra they know by heart.
Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, in the flesh, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her wealthy boyfriend and their group. Once there, Remy and Alicia try (a little too hard) to fit into Jen’s exalted social circle, but violent desire and class resentment bubble beneath the surface of this beachside paradise, threatening to erupt. As small disturbances escalate into outright horror, we find ourselves tumbling with Remy and Alicia into an uncanny alternate reality, one shaped by their most unspeakable, deviant, and intoxicating fantasies. Is this what “self-actualization” looks like?
Part millennial social comedy, part psychedelic horror, and all wildly entertaining, A Touch of Jen is a sly, unflinching examination of the hidden drives that lurk just outside the frame of our carefully curated selves.
About Beth Morgan
Beth Morgan grew up outside Sherman, Texas and studied writing as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently completing an MFA at Brooklyn College. Her work has been published in The Iowa Review and The Kenyon Review Online.

Evening Literary Seminar: A Month in the Country, J.L. Carr
2021-08-23 17:00 - 18:30

Book Celebration: Hurricanes, Love Affairs, & Other Disasters by Susan Praver-Pérez
2021-08-21 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us in continuing the celebration of Hurricanes, Love Affairs, & Other Disasters, Susana Praver-Pérez’ first full-length collection of poetry!
Readings by Nina Serrano, Josiah Luis Alderete, Naomi Quiñonez, Rebeca Lois Lucret, Elijah Pringle III, and of course, Susana Praver-Pérez.
Music by Maria Jose Montijo (“Majo”)!
Order your copy of Hurricanes, Love Affairs, & Other Disasters by Susana Praver-Pérez here: https://www.nomadicpress.org/…/hurricanesloveaffairsand…
Zoom Joining Info
Topic: Book Celebration: Hurricanes, Love Affairs, & Other Disasters by Susan Praver-Pérez
Time: Aug 21, 2021 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Meeting ID: 840 1121 1647
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