Artists, cosplay, panels, vendors, and more!
DIG THIS: BOSTON COMICS IN COLOR FESTIVAL
Book
PROJECTING CONNECTIONS AND BAAFF SPRING SHOWCASE
Screenings and an author book talk
PLAY READING BOOK CLUB: “DREAMING ZENZILE”
Explore the text behind this ArtsEmerson production
BOOK REVIEW: NAZIS OF COPLEY SQUARE
Thousands of Bostonians, including many cops, were active members of an antisemitic Catholic fascist organization in the opening years of WWII
ALCOHOL-FUELED PARTYING IN BOSTON’S COMBAT ZONE
Jan Brogan’s new book on Murder, Race, and Boston’s Struggle for Justice
ANTIMAN: EMERSON PROF RAJIV MOHABIR’S “HYBRID MEMOIR”
“I tried to reclaim power in that story of being outed and that word from people in my community.”
A MASTER OF DJINN: WHAT’S ALTERNATE IN ALTERNATE HISTORY?
Magic shenanigans are the order of the day in this new fantasy novel set in an alternative-universe Cairo
DR. STRANGER: JOE KEOHANE ON THE BENEFITS OF CONNECTING IN A SUSPICIOUS WORLD
“I thought maybe I could just talk to people for two years and report back about what happened, but then I started seeing all this research and it started to explain why I enjoyed having these interactions.”
EXCERPT: THE HISTORY OF TATTOOING IN BOSTON
Edward Liberty’s Boston location gave him fresh proximity to his maturing sons and influence upon them
BOSTON DID IT FIRST: AN INTERVIEW, AN AUTHOR, AND 500 LOCAL INNOVATIONS
An interview, an author, and 500 local innovations
ONE AUTHOR’S BOSTON DIVE INTO AMERICA’S FIRST TRIAL
“From everything I’ve seen, it was the first … trial of the century.”
BOOK REVIEW: “IN DEFENSE OF SKA”
An incredibly diverse genre with anti-racist roots, historically panned by snobby critic dicks
POET AND UMASS AMHERST PROF MARTÍN ESPADA: “THIS BOOK IS … MASSACHUSETTS. IT’S WHO I AM.”
“I think it was important, a way of restoring their humanity, to give them back their names.”
WALKING THE BOSTON COMMON IN PAUL ROBESON’S FOOTSTEPS
“Robeson put his shoulder to the wheel of many specific liberation movements. He himself felt and acknowledged the unique burden of racism against Blacks in the United States.”
THE HISTORY OF STAND-UP: FROM MARK TWAIN TO DAVE CHAPPELLE
From the podcast to the book, Wayne Federman chronicles the business of joke-telling.
ADAPTATION: A NEW ENGLAND “ROGUE SCHOLAR” SHAKES UP SHAKESPEARE
Michael Blanding’s new book goes beyond what “scholars have previously realized.” “At the very least it should be explored.”
DISASTER AND BUREAUCRACY: KIM STANLEY ROBINSON’S “THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE”
Robinson also passionately advocates direct democracy and popular participation in small scale, but he is oddly reserved about capitalism, which underlies climate change and prevents action to abate it.
ZEITGEIST PRESS RELEASING WORK BY LATE BOSTON POET MELINDA KWESKIN
Virtual event this weekend.
BOOK REVIEW: REAGANLAND
A seemingly endless recitation of events
AGE OF ILLUSIONS: BACEVICH LOOKS AT AMERICA’S LOST TIME
In general, though, the noted historian's depiction of the '90s and '00s as an age of fraudulent promises and wasted opportunities rings true.
INTERVIEW: A PEOPLE’S GUIDE TO GREATER BOSTON
“A People’s Guide to Greater Boston,” out now from the University of California Press, is a very readable text but one that’s hard to define. A guide book with a historical, left-wing perspective, it is both thoroughly well-researched and pleasing to the eye: a high-production-value text and a far-reaching survey of important sites in and around the city.
THANKSGIVING FICTION: WE LIVE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE THE BAD GUYS WON
"Americans today live in a very real universe where the functional equivalent of Nazis—European colonists—committed genocide against Native American peoples..."
HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST
An interview with Ibram X. Kendi
DigBoston sat down with Ibram X. Kendi, the author of Stamped from the Beginning, to discuss his new book, How to Be an Antiracist, ahead of his talk at Brookline Booksmith, Aug 28, at 6 pm.
How to Be an Antiracist serves not only as a guide to defining and recognizing racism in our society, but also chronicles Kendi’s own path towards antiracism. The mix of critical self reflection, historical recollection and the precise naming of racist ideas and systems creates a potent call to action for a better, antiracist society.
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I define an antiracist as someone who is expressing an antiracist idea or supporting an antiracist policy. I believe it is very important to have terminology to define ourselves by what we are, not by what we are not. The ideology behind the saying “I’m not racist’ was popularized first by eugenicists and then Jim Crow-era segregationists and today is still used by white nationalists. I don’t think people realize the term “not racist” has long functioned as a term of denial. It is a defense mechanism that allows people to refuse to recognize the ways in which they are being racist when they are charged with racism.
When someone today says “I’m not racist,” they are connecting themselves to eugenicists, segregationists, and white nationalists. In contrast, antiracism has a very clear definition. An antiracist is someone who believes that no race of people is inferior or superior in anyway—having been raised consuming racist ideas, being antiracist requires constant self-awareness and self-criticism.
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AN INTERVIEW WITH ELAINE WELTEROTH
Author of ‘More Than Enough’
Elaine Welteroth is a judge on the new Project Runway. Formerly, she was the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue where she was the youngest ever to have that title at a Condé Nast publication. She is known for shifting the magazine’s mission and making it more socially conscious. Welteroth is now releasing her book “More Than Enough,” which is “part-manifesto, part-memoir” where she writes about her time navigating the media industry and the struggles she faced behind the headlines.
Welteroth tells DigBoston that she’s spent so many years trying to get a seat at the table in the media world. Once she got to the head of that table, she’s now building her own table. “This book is my first table, it is my first offering to this audience, and I can’t wait to invite them to sit at the table and have conversations and break bread. This is just one of the many tables I will build. I have much more to do in my career,” she said.
She is coming to Boston for her book tour, and I got to chat with her over the phone about her book, her success, and her transition to TV.
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I am mostly excited about being in conversation with Bozoma Saint John. She’s a good friend of mine, and someone who’s been sort of an instrumental role model and mentor of sorts in my career. She’s just a total badass in her field, and I’m excited to go in with her and in the company of all the other women who are going to come out and talk about career and talk about success, and also the underside of success stuff—the stuff that we don’t often talk about in public forum. She’s just the best person to help me bring this book to life. And she makes a cameo in it, which is an added bonus, which I don’t even think she knows yet.
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BOOK REVIEW: SEA PEOPLE
POEMS, LIKE BAROQUE LASERS
EXCERPT: ‘A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO CANNABIS’
“We should create a list of strains and products that work for each of our conditions,” said the cancer patient as they settled into their chairs. “And put it on the internet so everyone can see it.” The rest of the group murmured their approval.
BOOK REVIEW: ANXIETY AND THE EQUATION
It’s not a textbook, but there’s “something you can learn from it”
Ludwig Boltzmann was an excruciatingly anxious person and also one of the best scientific minds
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INTERVIEW WITH ASAD HAIDER
Author of Mistaken Identity: Anti-Racism and the Struggle Against White Supremacy
Asad Haider is a founding editor of Viewpoint magazine and author of a new book, Mistaken Identity: Anti-Racism and the Struggle Against White Supremacy. He is speaking with Ben Tarnoff on the topic “What is to be done?” this Thursday (Nov 29) at the Lilypad in Cambridge’s Inman Square at 7 pm. DigBoston caught up with Haider to chat with him about his book and his views on contemporary politics.
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I think it’s important to be very specific about political terminology. The term identity politics was advanced within a very specific political grouping and responded to very specific historical questions. The Combahee River Collective was a collection of activists who came out of various social movements in the ’60s and ’70s, like the anti-war movement, the student movement, the black power movement, and the feminist movement, and they determined that while black women were participants in all these movements, they were not represented. The analysis that the Combahee River Collective had was to say that these movements were all based on dominant identities and that the marginal identities of black women had been effaced.
So it was necessary to have an organization that was centered on this identity, this excluded identity, and centering the organization on this excluded identity meant disrupting all the existing forms of exclusion. That’s why their statement not only says that their politics comes out of their identities but also that winning freedom for black women means overcoming every other system of oppression and winning freedom for everybody. That’s the origin of the term, and I think that when people try to take the term and apply it to any different context at any point in history, for example to say that the civil rights movement was based on identity politics, means that the term loses all meaning.
You can see why it’s so specific if you imagine another identity group advancing the idea that the most radical politics come out of their identity. For example, if a group of white men tried to make the same claim, it would be a serious problem. So it’s less about a general statement of identity and more about a specific political intervention.
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CYCLING FOR DUMMIES
Daniel De Visé on his new book The Comeback
The Sox have done it again this week, winning the fourth World Series in 15 years. You can’t walk down the street without seeing a proud fan sauntering with a Red Sox cap cocked on their head. A little over a hundred years ago, though, baseball wasn’t the biggest sport in town, journalist Daniel de Visé told DigBoston. It was cycling.
De Visé is the author of a new book on American cycling called The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France. His book chronicles the ups and downs of LeMond’s cycling career—from his humble California beginnings, to becoming the first American to win the Tour de France, to his remarkable recovery from a near-fatal hunting accident to win the tour again.
De Visé is coming to Boston to talk about his book at Trident Booksellers and Cafe on Sunday, Nov 4. DigBoston talked to him about his book, cycling in Boston, and how cycling makes for thrilling reading even when it’s boring on TV.
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Greg LeMond’s victory by eight seconds that year was the greatest bicycle race of them all, but I think it’s not just a great cycling story. I think it’s actually one of the all-time greatest narrative sports stories in any athletic endeavor. It’s not just one comeback. Really it’s multiple comebacks. The first is how Greg survives sexual abuse as a young man. Riding hundreds and hundreds of miles on his bike helped him overcome that pain and shame. Then he goes to Europe, and he’s almost the first American to go there and rise to the top, and becomes the first American to win the Tour de France. All of Europe was against him. The third was when he gets shot in a hunting accident—almost dies—and has to recover. Then, after Greg retires, he has this terrible faceoff with Lance Armstrong for many years. LeMond is the first to question whether Armstrong was for real.
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