Sun Ra's Chicago

Sun Ra's Chicago PDF Author: William Sites
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673224X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
“Sites provides crucial context on how Chicago’s Afrocentrist philosophy, religion, and jazz scenes helped turn Blount into Sun Ra.” —Chicago Reader Sun Ra (1914–93) was one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his Arkestra appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, the keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology that claimed the planet Saturn as his true home. In Sun Ra’s Chicago, William Sites brings this visionary musician back to earth—specifically to the city’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 he lived and relaunched his career. The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the possibilities of urban life in new ways. “Four stars . . . Sites makes the engaging argument that the idiosyncratic jazz legend’s penchant for interplanetary journeys and African American utopia was in fact inspired by urban life right on Earth.” —Spectrum Culture

Sun Ra's Chicago

Sun Ra's Chicago PDF Author: William Sites
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673224X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
“Sites provides crucial context on how Chicago’s Afrocentrist philosophy, religion, and jazz scenes helped turn Blount into Sun Ra.” —Chicago Reader Sun Ra (1914–93) was one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his Arkestra appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, the keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology that claimed the planet Saturn as his true home. In Sun Ra’s Chicago, William Sites brings this visionary musician back to earth—specifically to the city’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 he lived and relaunched his career. The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the possibilities of urban life in new ways. “Four stars . . . Sites makes the engaging argument that the idiosyncratic jazz legend’s penchant for interplanetary journeys and African American utopia was in fact inspired by urban life right on Earth.” —Spectrum Culture

Under the Dome

Under the Dome PDF Author: Jean Daive
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868125
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
An arresting memoir of the final years and tragic suicide of one of twentieth-century Europe’s greatest poets, published on the centenary of his birth. "Daive's memoir sensitively conjures a portrait of a man tormented by both his mind and his medical treatment but who nonetheless remained a generous friend and a poet for whom writing was a matter of life and death."—The New Yorker "Jean Daive's memoir of his brief but intense spell as confidant and poetic confrère of Paul Celan offers us unique access to the mind and personality of one of the great poets of the dark twentieth century."—J.M. Coetzee Paul Celan (1920–1970) is considered one of Europe's greatest post-World-War II poets, known for his astonishing experiments in poetic form, expression, and address. Under the Dome is French poet Jean Daive's haunting memoir of his friendship with Celan, a precise yet elliptical account of their daily meetings, discussions, and walks through Paris, a routine that ended suddenly when Celan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Seine. Daive's grief at the loss of his friend finds expression in Under the Dome, where we are given an intimate insight into Celan's last years, at the height of his poetic powers, and as he approached the moment when he would succumb to the debilitating emotional pain of a Holocaust survivor. In Under the Dome, Jean Daive illuminates Celan's process of thinking about poetry, grappling with questions of where it comes from and what it does: invaluable insights about poetry's relation to history and ethics, and how poems offer pathways into a deeper grasp of our past and present. This new edition of Rosmarie Waldrop’s masterful translation includes an introduction by scholars Robert Kaufman and Philip Gerard, which provides critical, historical, and cultural context for Daive’s enigmatic, timeless text. "Under the Dome breathes with Celan while walking with Celan, walking in the dark and the light with Celan, invoking the stillness, the silence, of the breathturn while speaking for the deeply human necessity of poetry."—Michael Palmer, author of The Laughter of the Sphinx "The fragments textured together in this more-than-magnificent rendering of Jean Daive’s prose poem by this master of the word, Rosmarie Waldrop, grab on and leave us haunted and speechless."—Mary Ann Caws, author of Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism and editor of the Yale Anthology of Twentieth Century French Poetry "Rosmarie Waldrop's brilliant translation resonates with her profound knowledge of both Celan's and Daive's poetry and the passion for language that she shares with them. The text brings these three major poets together in a highly unusual and wholly successful collaboration."—Cole Swensen, author of On Walking On "Rosmarie Waldrop takes up Celan’s question to Jean Daive as her own. I cannot unread her inimitable ease in these pages. This is a book that contends with time."—Fady Joudah, author of Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance "Daive's writing is a highly punctuated recollection, a memoir, perhaps a testimony, but also surely a way of attending to the time of the writing, the conditions and coordinates of Celan's various enunciations, his linguistic humility. … Celan’s death, what Daive calls 'really unforeseeable,' remains as an 'undercurrent' in the conversations recollected here, gathered up again, with an insistence and clarity of true mourning and acknowledgement."—Judith Butler, author of The Force of Nonviolence

City Lights

City Lights PDF Author: Judith Moffatt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780689812729
Category : Board books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Printed with glow-in-the-dark ink and illustrated with cut-paper artwork, each of these cozy bedtime board books feature a die-cut moon that, once charged by light, literally shines over each page. Set on a bedside table, the glowing city scenes and nighttime critters in each book make for perfect bedtime reading. Full color.

Family Album

Family Album PDF Author: Gabriela Alemán
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780872868823
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
"Family Album is Ecuadorian author Gabriela Alemán's rollicking follow up to her acclaimed English-language debut, Poso Wells. Alemán is known for her spirited and sardonic take on the fatefully interconnected--and often highly compromised--forces at work in present-day South America, and particularly in Ecuador. In this collection of eight hugely entertaining short stories, she dives deep into the tales that Ecuadorian's like to tell about themselves, following the foundational creation myths of that small South American nation all the way to their logical and sometimes ignominious ends. A muddy brew of pop-culture and pop-folklore yields intriguing, lesser-known episodes of contemporary Ecuadorian history, along with a rich cast of unforgettable minor characters whose intimate stories open up onto a vista of Ecuador's place on the world stage, now and all along the way. Alemán teases tropes of hardboiled detective fiction, satire, and adventure narratives to recast the discussion of historical forces and national identity. The stories provide a humorous spin on universal themes of human frailty and desire, while taking on some difficult and complex issues, including misogynistic violence, the exploitation and appropriation of natural resources, violence against indigenous groups, religious tensions, political corruption, and the steady flow of illicit drugs. From a pair of deep-sea divers using Robinson Crusoe's map of a shipwreck to locate sunken treasure in the seas of the Galapagos Archipelago, to an outlaw pilot who flies a group of missionaries from the American Midwest deep into the Amazon jungle, where their attempt to convert an indigenous village results in a massacre, opening the way for the appropriation of natives' land by oil companies; from a small group of mysterious Germans who took refuge on an unpopulated Galapagos island during the lead-up to the Second World War, to a night with the husband of Ecuador's most infamous expat, Lorena Bobbit, this series of cracked "family portraits" provides a cast of heroes and anti-heroes in stories that sneak up on a reader before they know what's happened: they've learned a great deal more about a country whose more well known exports -- soccer, coffee and cocoa--mask a much more intriguing national story that's ripe for the telling"--

The Historic Unfulfilled Promise

The Historic Unfulfilled Promise PDF Author: Howard Zinn
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
ISBN: 087286555X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Collects articles penned by the author for "Progressive" magazine from 1980 to 2009, offering critiques of the government, encouragement for citizens to organize, and a voice on behalf of the working class.

Shoot an Iraqi

Shoot an Iraqi PDF Author: Wafaa Bilal
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872866157
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Wafaa Bilal's childhood in Iraq was defined by the horrific rule of Saddam Hussein, two wars, a bloody uprising and time spent interned in chaotic refugee camps in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Bilal eventually made it to the United States to become a professor and a successful artist, but when his brother was killed by an unmanned U.S. Predator drone, he decided to use his art to confront those in the comfort zone with the realities of life in a conflict zone. His response was “Domestic Tension,” an unsettling interactive performance piece: for one month, Bilal lived alone in a prison cell-sized room in the line of fire of a remote-controlled paintball gun and a camera that connected him to Internet viewers around the world. Visitors to the gallery and a virtual audience that grew by the thousands could shoot at him twenty-four hours a day. The project received overwhelming worldwide attention and spawned provocative online debates; ultimately, Bilal was named Chicago Tribune’s Artist of the Year. Structured in two parallel narratives, the story of Bilal’s life journey and his “Domestic Tension” experience, Shoot an Iraqi, is for anyone who seeks insight into the current conflict in Iraq and for those fascinated by interactive art technologies and the ever-expanding world of online gaming. Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal has exhibited his art worldwide, and traveled and lectured extensively to inform audiences of the situation of the Iraqi people, and the importance of peaceful conflict resolution. Bilal's 2007 dynamic installation "Domestic Tension" gained global recognition, being named Artist of the Year by the Chicago Tribune. Bilal has held exhibitions in Baghdad, the Netherlands, Thailand and Croatia; as well as at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Milwaukee Art Museum and various other US galleries. His residencies have included Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California; Catwalk in New New York; and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Nochita

Nochita PDF Author: Dia Felix
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872866130
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
A poetic debut novel, formally experimental, by turns hallucinatory, darkly funny and brutally real. Nochita is tender, fierce, and unforgettable. Daughter to a divorced new age guru, Nochita wanders through the cracks of California's counter-culture, half feral child, half absurdist prophet. When tragedy strikes she is sent to live with her father, a working-class cowboy with a fragile grasp on sobriety and a dangerously mean fiancée. Stuck with adults chillingly unable to care for her, Nochita takes to the streets, a runaway with nothing to run from, driven forward by desperation, hope, and an irrepressible wonder. Nochita is a poetic novel dazzling in its detail, stylistically daring, by turns hallucinatory, darkly funny, and brutally real. At its heart is the singular voice of Nochita, tender and fierce, alone and alive and utterly unforgettable. Praise for Nochita: "Nochita shimmers with humor and delight, she burns with stark raving intelligence."—Mary Gaitskill "In Nochita, Dia Felix builds an extraordinarily rich and inventive language to carry the kaleidoscopic point of view of her young protagonist. What a pleasure to open a book and find such exuberant and committed artistry. A stunning debut."—Janet Fitch "There is a way some writers say hello on the first page that gets me excited to be in their conversation. Nochita has it with teeth!! I love this book and the weird strong eye it has on the world, melting clothes off bodies with a crème brulée torch. Nochita is quite the dance to read through, kind of like shaking a bad morning off and realizing you really love this world. Makes me smile, like Dia Felix writes, 'I think I can latch on to this machine now.' BUY THIS BOOK, don’t just stand there reading my fucking blurb!!"— CAConrad "In the vein of extra-sensitive displaced daughters à la White Oleander, with the crystallized hyper-perception at the center of The Bluest Eye, Nochita is singular, resonant—her pictures get under your skin and stay there; more than lines embedded, here are things you've seen before, numbed and fallen away with the process of becoming adult. Against writers who make a phalanx of accuracy and precision, Felix delivers synesthetic gut-sense in a visual pile-on that picks up and turns over your sense of being human, dirt and M&Ms and kundalini shakti, written by a gifted seer whose inner child is alive and screaming … Nochita brings it down to the roots."—Mila Jaroniec

Howl

Howl PDF Author: Allen Ginsberg
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061137456
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
First published in 1956, Allen Ginsberg's Howl is a prophetic masterpiece—an epic raging against dehumanizing society that overcame censorship trials and obscenity charges to become one of the most widely read poems of the century. This annotated version of Ginsberg's classic is the poet's own re-creation of the revolutionary work's composition process—as well as a treasure trove of anecdotes, an intimate look at the poet's writing techniques, and a veritable social history of the 1950s.

Spring and Autumn Annals

Spring and Autumn Annals PDF Author: Diane di Prima
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868575
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2021. Lyrical and unforgettable, part elegy and part memoir, we present a previously unpublished masterpiece from the Beat Generation icon. Simultaneously released with an expanded edition of di Prima's classic Revolutionary Letters on the one-year anniversary of her passing. In the autumn of 1964, Diane di Prima was a young poet living in New York when her dearest friend, dancer, choreographer, and Warhol Factory member, Freddie Herko, leapt from the window of a Greenwich Village apartment to a sudden, dramatic, and tragic death at the age of 29. In her shock and grief, di Prima began a daily practice of writing to Freddie. For a year, she would go to her study each day, light a stick of incense, and type furiously until it burned itself out. The narrative ranges over the decade from 1954—the year di Prima and Herko first met—to 1965, with occasional forays into di Prima's memories of growing up in Brooklyn. Lyrical, elegant, and nakedly honest, Spring and Autumn Annals is a moving tribute to a friendship, and to the extraordinary innovation and accomplishments of the period. Masterfully observed and passionately recorded, it offers a uniquely American portrait of the artist as a young woman in the heyday of bohemian New York City. Praise for Spring and Autumn Annals: "The book is a treasure. Moving between the East Village, San Francisco, Topanga Canyon and Stinson Beach with young children, di Prima's life is unbelievably rich. She studies Greek, writes, prepares dinners and feasts, and co-edits Floating Bear magazine. Diane di Prima is one of the greatest writers of her generation, and this book offers a window into its lives."—Chris Kraus "Extolled by a writer who radically devoted herself to the experiential truth of beauty and intellect, in poverty and grace, in independent dignity, and in the community of Beat consciousness, Diane di Prima's Spring and Autumn Annals arrives as a long-lost charm of illuminated meditations to love, life, death, eros and selflessness. An essential 1960s text of visionary rapaciousness."—Thurston Moore "Freddie Herko wished for a third love before he died; and what a love is in this book's beholding, saying, and release. Di Prima's dancing narrative, propelled and circling at the speed of thought, picking up every name and detailed perception as a rolling tide, fills me with gratitude for the truth of her eye. Nothing gets past it, not even the 'ballet slippers letting in the snow.'"—Ana Božičević "A masterpiece of literary reflection, as quest to archive her dancer friend's life, to make art at all costs and the price dearly paid. Di Prima's observational capacity is profound, her devotion and loyalty assures her deserved place as a national treasure. She generously instills in us the call of poetic remembrance as an act of resistance, and gives voice to the marginalized participants in experimental cultural movements that carried courage in creative rebellion while envisioning freedom of the human spirit. Di Prima’s poetic memoir of the artist journey is a triumph. A must read and reread for years to come."—Karen Finley

Redefining Black Power

Redefining Black Power PDF Author: Joanne Griffith
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
ISBN: 0872865460
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Conversations with black leaders and activists exploring current African American political and cultural life.