Fiction that Matters

The letter that opened author Richard Wright’s FBI file in 1942 for his work “Twelve Million Black Voices”.

humanrightswatch:

Kim Jong-Un’s succession as North Korea’s supreme leader after the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il, in December 2011 had little impact on the country’s dire human rights record. 

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) systematically violates the rights of its population. The government has ratified four key international human rights treaties and includes rights protections in its constitution, but does not allow organized political opposition, free media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom. Arbitrary arrest, detention, lack of due process, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees remain serious and pervasive problems. North Korea also practices collective punishment for various anti-state offenses, for which it enslaves hundreds of thousands of citizens in prison camps, including children. The government periodically publicly executes citizens for stealing state property, hoarding food, and other “anti-socialist” crimes, and maintains policies that have continually subjected North Koreans to food shortages and famine.

Read more on the famine, executions, torture, and political prisoner camps »

lareviewofbooks:

Marjorie Heins raises important but troubling questions about academic freedom in her new book Priests of our Democracy. From Stephen Rohde’s review:

Heins juxtaposes her compelling and distressing account of the anticommunist purges [during the 1940s and 50s] that reached into the ivory towers of our colleges and universities with a chilling cautionary tale that asks whether history is repeating itself through the repressive reactions to 9/11. Have the earlier witch hunts that targeted alleged communists (with a disturbing and disproportionate focus on Jews) been replaced with an obsessive targeting of alleged terrorists (with a disturbing and disproportionate focus on Muslims)? Have we learned anything from the excesses of McCarthyism, or are we condemned to repeat them?

Read more over here.

penamerican:

The following is an excerpt from Rob Ruck’s Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game, which was runner up for the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing.

 

Nobody has accused Los Angeles Angels outfielder Torii Hunter, 2009 recipient of the Branch Rickey Award for community service, of talking trash.  But he became embroiled in a similar squabble on the eve of the 2010 season when he contended that: “People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African-American,  They’re not us. They’re impostors.”  Like Sheffield, he said that financial disparities between African American and Latino players were driving blacks out of baseball.  ”As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us,” he said. “It’s like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper.  It’s like, ‘Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?’ …  I’m telling you, it’s sad.”

 

Read the rest of the excerpt on PEN’s blog. 

sexantus:

caribbeancivilisation:

La Citadelle, Haiti 

The massive stone structure was built by up to 20,000 workers between 1805 and 1820 as part of a system of fortifications designed to keep the newly-independent nation of Haiti safe from French incursions.

comin from where i’m from…

(via freshmouthgoddess)

kbkonnected:

Digital Vaults is one resource you won’t want to miss.

This is an amazing site for anything about U.S.History.  The ability for teachers and students to create their own collections using items from the National Archives makes for endless learning opportunities in the classroom. Teachers and students can then create posters and movies with their collection. Click on “create” at bottom of screen to begin using this tool.  Amazing site with wonderful educational opportunities for students to create professional looking presentations.

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From the Site: “The National Archives new “Digital Vaults” exhibit delivers an online experience that is unlike any other. With a database of some 1,200 documents, photographs, drawings, maps, and other materials and a keywording system that visually links records, the Digital Vaults enables visitors to customize their exhibit experience and to create posters, movies, and games that can be shared by e-mail. Each record in Digital Vaults is also linked to the National Archives’ Archival Research Catalog (ARC), so visitors who want to know more can take the first steps toward a research journey into the National Archives.

The site has a special interactive resources section for educators and students. Teachers can get great ideas on lesson plans using reproducible primary sources, find information on teaching activities correlated to National Teaching Standards, and engage in a variety of professional development programs - on-site or online. Students can explore the depth and diversity of the holdings of the National Archives for their own school projects, gear up for National History Day, or even pick up a virtual pen and sign the Declaration of Independence!”

Monday, December 17, 6:30 PM
Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th St), NYC

Free, no reservations, first come, first seated.

Join us for a reading of excerpts from The Brother, a new play by John Hancock and Dorothy Tristan, directed by Ian Strasfogel, and based on the book of the same name by New York Times editor, Sam Roberts. It follows the espionage trial that led to the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, focusing on the memories of the man whose testimony almost single-handedly convicted them, Ethel’s brother David Greenglass. Greenglass, a former machinist at Los Alamos, was in fact a Soviet spy. 

Emblazoned in popular memory, this polarizing case still reverberates in American culture and politics. The reading will be followed by a discussion with the playwrights, Strasfogel, Roberts, physicist Brian Schwartz and Ben Bederson, Los Alamos veteran*.

The history of comics censorship is a sordid saga of misguided censors, self-imposed silence, criminal prosecutions, and suppression of free expression that led to the obliteration of thousands of careers, more than a few publishers, and even an entire country’s comics industry.

CBLDF blogger Joe Sergi has broken down some of the specific instances of comics censorship, from the attacks in on what is widely accepted as the first comic book — attacks that predate the comics code by almost 60 years — to a side-by-side visual comparison of how the Comics Code led to the nonsensical editing and revision of thousands of books.

Let’s take a quick stroll through comics censorship history…

Read more