![]() ![]() ![]() They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship that were indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. Hartman narrates the story of this radical social transformation against the grain of the prevailing century-old argument about the crisis of the black family. ![]() Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage. In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Summary: "A breathtaking exploration of the lives of young black women in the early twentieth century. ![]()
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![]() To tell the truth, Helen Macdonald’s writing is so graceful and clever (yet highly approachable) that I would be interested in any subject she writes about. But almost immediately the author reveals it’s also about the death of her father and the grief of dealing with this fact. Since it’s all about falcons I wasn’t sure it was going to interest me. I had started reading Maria Semple’s re-released novel “This One is Mine” and didn’t find it that engaging so I switched to this book. ![]() Do you ever read a book and are so intensely involved with it that it feels like a whole year has gone by rather than just a few hours? That was my experience reading “H is for Hawk.” I only started it on Monday and have been totally engrossed reading it during every spare minute that I can find. ![]() 5/23/2023 0 Comments Max porter books![]() Desktop and laptop users can either download the Zoom application or access the event via their web browser. You do not need to have a Zoom account to join a meeting, but mobile users will need to download the Zoom app for their device. Please check your email.Īll bookings for online events will be closed one hour before the event begins. ![]() To ensure the Zoom event stays private, participants will be emailed a unique zoom link and a password 30 minutes before the event begins on the day of the event. To book for this event, you must provide your email address. This event commences online at 6.00pm using the video conferencing platform Zoom. How to 'attend' a virtual event at Readings ![]() We are tremendously excited to be able to offer you the chance to listen to Porter speak about his work. Max Porter is the author of The Death of Francis Bacon, praised as ‘a miniature masterpiece’, and ‘a feat of empathy, imagination and literary brio’. ![]() Readings is delighted to be hosting Max Porter to discuss his most recent book, Shy.įrom the bestselling author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Shy is the polyphonic story of a troubled teenager, with all of the humanity and trademark invention we expect from one of our most exciting writers. ![]() ![]() In certain ways this is true, but in other significant ways it is not. The original Brave New World has often been considered a companion piece to George Orwell’s 1984. What is even more startling about Huxley’s prescience is that, in the postmodern world, not only have some of his predictions materialized but that they have in a certain sense become signposts of the socio-political and cultural framework of the western world. ![]() ![]() In his 1958 revisitation of the brave new world he envisioned in 1932, Aldous Huxley was shocked to see how many of his predictions had been realized, and, even more so, how quickly they had arrived: “The prophesies made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would” (Huxley, 1958:4). most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution (Huxley, 1958). ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments A Charming Idea by Alex Mar![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Leslie Jamison: At one point in your book, you talk about mixing the “me” up with the “them,” and I’m curious to hear you talk about how you got mixed up in this. What follows is a slightly revised and edited version of their conversation.Īlex Mar will be reading - along with Alexandra Kleeman,Melissa Febos,Angel Nafis, and Lincoln Michel - as part of Electric Literature and The Rumpus’s holiday event at Housing Works next Tuesday, December 15th. (The book was recently included in the New York Times ’ list of Notable Books of 2015.) The two writers discussed Mar’s debut, their shared obsessions, and some of the stranger challenges of writing non-fiction. Leslie Jamison, the best-selling author of The Empathy Exams, recently joined Alex Mar at New York City’s Housing Works to discuss Mar’s first book, Witches of America (Sarah Crichton Books 2015) - an intimate, immersive account of present-day witchcraft all around this country. ![]() ![]() ![]() But corsets were associated with upper class status because upper class wore them first. ![]() I mean, male doctors more or less would say don’t wear corsets, they are unhealthy, they’re bad for you, and they’re bad for your unborn child. Women had a number of reasons why they choose to wear corsets often in the face of mail opposition. But if you look at the history more carefully, and it did last 400 years, you see how it’s more complicated than that. ![]() I think most people look at it as being something which was deeply oppressive to women and that somehow a patriarchal society forced women to wear it. And I was drawn to the corset because I think it’s the single most controversial garment in the entire history of fashion. Was it oppressive to women, or was it liberating? And it was like a light bulb went on and I realized fashion is part of culture. And one of my classmates gave a presentation about two scholarly articles in a feminist journal arguing about the meaning of the Victorian corset. Valerie Steele: The corset – what made me go into fashion history actually, I had gone to Yale to do Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History. ![]() ![]() ![]() With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel’s mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations. Oral “memory libraries” kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written-Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. ![]() He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought-the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the “complete” libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. “Libraries,” he says, “have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.” In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries. ![]() Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments Batman scott snyder vol 6![]() Amazing Spider-Man Writer Told to Skip Conventions ![]() As for how Mary Jane's story with Paul evolves, we'll have to pick up Amazing Spider-Man #25 next week to see. Time moves more quickly in this alternate dimension, so even though only a day has passed since Peter was teleported back to his Earth, Mary Jane is still waiting for him to rescue her. ![]() This leaves Mary Jane with the mysterious Paul, who we know later becomes her boyfriend. It picks up with Mary Jane and Spider-Man in an intense battle with the Mayan god Wayep in another dimension, and Mary Jane sacrifices herself to allow Spidey to make it back home. has the exclusive preview of The Amazing Spider-Man #25 by Zeb Wells, Kaare Andrews, John Romita Jr., Scott Hanna, Marcio Menyz, and VC's Joe Caramagna. ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments Mistakes were made meryl wilsner![]() ![]() Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school’s Family Weekend, she isn’t looking for a hookup-it just happens. “ erotic yearning in a class all their own.” - Entertainment Weeklyįrom Meryl Wilsner, the acclaimed author of Something to Talk About, comes Mistakes Were Made, a sharp and sexy rom-com about a college senior who accidentally hooks up with her best friend’s mom. ![]() This reader hopes Wilsner keeps these scorchers coming." - The Washington Post ![]() Cassie and Erin’s romance is by turns delightfully raunchy and deeply emotional. "This blazing-hot forbidden romance manages to sensibly, and compassionately, capture the complexities of starting adult life after college and finding love and your identity in middle age. ![]() 5/22/2023 0 Comments Ginsberg poems howl![]() ![]() He finally finished Columbia in 1948 with high grades but was arrested when a drug-addict friend stored supplies in his apartment. Ginsberg was expelled from Columbia in 1945 for a series of minor infractions, then bummed around, working as a merchant seaman, a dishwasher, and a welder. At Columbia, he met Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady, who would become central figures in the Beat movement. ![]() Ginsberg attended Columbia University, intending to study law. Ginsberg’s father raised Allen and his older brother to recite poetry by Poe, Dickens, Keats, Shelley, and Milton. ![]() Her mental illness and death were the subjects of Ginsberg’s poem “Kaddish.” Ginsberg was born in 1926 to a high school English teacher father and Marxist mother who later suffered a mental breakdown. The poem was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the tone for confessional poetry of the 1960s and later. Poet Allen Ginsberg reads his poem “Howl” at a poetry reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco. ![]() |