Reading Reinaldo Areas’ novel The Color of Summer was a breakthrough experience for me. From him (and Eduardo Galeano) I figured out how to structure what eventually became The Book of Mev. The following are some passages I love from his Before…
I’ve been reading a litte bit of Chomsky and thinking about you. Here is what I liked from Chomsky’s book: “…you do not do anything unless you’re aware that there’s something that ought to be…
Listen to Julian Assange speak from the Ecuador’s embassy in London to a side meeting of the UN General Assembly last Wednesday.
At first I would not believe that our allies, our liberators, the Americans, would plan and carry out programs which were total annihilation sweeps. I felt as did so many good Germans during the Nazi…
The case of Bradley Manning matters. The reason is simple: He touched a nerve. Before releasing over 250,000 diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, Manning commented, “Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going…
At this month’s Introduction to Poets, it will be my pleasure to share the work of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. His 1958 A Coney Island of the Mind has sold more than a million copies. We will…
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. –Bertrand Russell
This year I have invited people to participate in an Arab Writers in Translation Reading Circle. Last month, several friends and I met to discuss Egyptian writer Nawal El-Saadawi’s 1983 Memoirs from the Women’s Prison,…
I came across the following when preparing tonight’s session of our reading circle of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (the chapters on the Black Freedom struggle and the Vietnam War). Why should…