Talk by this Maltese American cartoonist and journalist who’s best known for his graphic historical novel Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, a collection of oral histories from elderly Palestinians who witnessed a mass murder in the 1956 Suez War.
5 p.m., Michigan Theater. Free. 668-8463.
Literati is pleased to continue our partnership with TEDxUofM as the on-site bookseller for the conference. The 8th annual TEDxUofM conference will be held on Wednesday, February 8th from 6-9pm at the Power Center for the Performing Arts. Join us for an evening filled with unique stories and revolutionary ideas as we celebrate “ideas worth spreading” from across the University of Michigan community.
Learn more and buy your ticket today at tedxuofm.com/attend. Student tickets are available for $12, non-student tickets are available for $20.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for staff-favorite Rebecca Solnit’s visit to Ann Arbor. Rebecca Solnit will deliver the Jill S. Harris memorial lecture related to her book Hope in the Dark, followed by a question and answer period with the audience. ASL interpretation will be provided.
In Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit has written about hope as not optimism, the belief that everything will be fine, but as uncertainty: as an uncertain future that leaves us room to act, as the possibility that we can shape that future in some way. Drawing from histories of popular power and civil society, of forgotten victories and remarkable campaigns, she has made the case for remembering our power, for using it, and for not assuming we know what will happen—the case against the certainty that underlie both optimism and pessimism. In her book A Paradise Built in Hell, she looked at how ordinary people are often resourceful, altruistic, and empathic in disaster, forming fleeting democracies and finding purpose and meaning. In this talk she’ll look at the state of hope in the present moment and what disasters like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina can tell us about political crises and civil society, drawing on both books and more recent political events.
Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of eighteen or so books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including a trilogy of atlases and the books Men Explain Things to Me; The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at Harper’s.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the annual Wallenberg Lecture, featuring Just Mercy author Bryan Stevenson.
Bryan Stevenson is committed to serving the legal needs of the poor in the American deep south. He has represented death row prisoners since 1985 when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an organization he founded in 1989 that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States. EJI litigates on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged, poor people denied effective representation, and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct. Under Stevenson’s direction, EJI has handled hundreds of cases and spared the lives of 125 death row prisoners. Stevenson’s arguments have convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that juveniles in non-homicide cases may not be sentenced to life without parole. He is creating a memorial in Montgomery, Alabama to commemorate the more than 4,000 persons who were lynched in twelve southern states between 1871 and 1950.
Stevenson is an inspirational professor of law at New York University where he prepares students to consider the legal needs of those in resource-deprived regions. He has been a visiting professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. He is the author of the prize-winning book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption and has won numerous awards and honors, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award Prize, the ACLU National Medal of Liberty, the Olaf Palme Prize for international human rights, the Gruber Prize for International Justice, and the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award.
For a quarter century, the Wallenberg Medal and Lecture program has honored individuals who, through their lived commitment to human rights and humanitarian principles, reflect the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg. A 1935 graduate of the University of Michigan’s College of Architecture, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II. In 1944, at the request of Jewish organizations and the American War Refugee Board, the Swedish Foreign Ministry sent Wallenberg on a rescue mission to Budapest. Over the course of six months, Wallenberg issued thousands of protective passports and placed many thousands of Jews in safe houses throughout the besieged city. He repeatedly risked his life to confront Hungarian and German forces, securing the release of Jews and placing them under the protection of the Swedish government.
Talk by U-M English professor Linda Gregerson, an award-winning poet. The Russel Award is the U-M’s highest honor, awarded annually to a faculty member who is especially distinguished in his or her field. Reception follows.
4:30-5:30 p.m., Rackham Amphitheater. Free. 615-0520.
Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for the second annual Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. Lecture in Native American Studies, featuring author Joy Harjo.
Joy Harjo is an internationally known poet, writer, and performer of the Mvskoke Creek nation. Her work has won many awards including the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, among many others. Harjo has written eight books of poetry, including How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems and She Had Some Horses. Her recent collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (W.W. Norton, 2015), was shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize and added to ALA’s 2016 Notable Books List. Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave (W.W. Norton, 2012) won several awards including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. Joy Harjo is also a renowned musician. She plays her saxophone internationally, both solo and with her bands Arrow Dynamics and Poetic Justice, and has set her poetry to music in melodic spoken-word form. She has five CDs of music and poetry including the award-winning album, Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears. Her album, Winding Through the Milky Way won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year in 2009. Paul Winter, Grammy award winning saxophonist, has hailed Harjo as “a poet of music just as she is a poet of words.”
This event is free and open to all. A catered reception and booksigning will follow the event.
“Slugg: A Boy’s Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration” is a blueprint for survival and a demonstration of the power of love, sacrifice, and service. The son of a Kingpin and the prince of a close-knit crime family, Tony Lewis Jr.’s life took a dramatic turn after his father’s arrest in 1989. Washington D.C. stood as the murder capital of the country and Lewis was cast into the heart of the struggle, from a life of stability and riches to one of chaos and poverty. How does one make it in America, battling the breakdown of families, the plague of premature death and the hopelessness of being reviled, isolated, and forgotten? Tony Lewis’ astonishing journey answers these questions and offers, for the first time, a close look at the familial residue of America’s historic program of mass incarceration.
Conversation between Harvard social sciences professor Matthew Desmond, author of the bestseller Evicted: Poverty & Profit in an American City, and veteran journalist and nonfiction writer Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here, an award-winning 1991 best-seller about 2 young boys growing up in Chicago’s public housing. Q&A. Reception follows.
4-6 p.m., Rackham Amphitheatre. Free. 936-3518.
Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for Diana Butler Bass’s visit to Ann Arbor. Diana is the Lenten speaker at First United Methodist Church in downtown Ann Arbor, and will speak on the topic of “Relocating Faith: Finding God in the Horizons of Nature and Neighbor.” This event is free and open to all. For more information, and to RSVP, please click here.
Diana Butler Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture. She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University. After a dozen years teaching undergraduates, she became a full-time writer, independent researcher, educator, and consultant. Her work has been cited in the national media, including TIME Magazine, USA TODAY, and the Washington Post, and she has appeared on CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. Diana is the author of nine books. Her most recent book is Grounded: Finding God in the World — A Spiritual Revolution. She comments on religion, politics, and culture in a variety of media.
U-M Ford School of Public Policy professor Shobita Parthasarathy discusses her new book. The culminating event of a day-long public symposium on “Patents, Social Justice, and Public Responsibility” (for information, see fordschool.umich.edu/events/2017/patents-social-justice-and-public-responsibility.)
4-5:30 p.m. Palmer Commons Forum Room, 100 Washtenaw. Free. 615-3893
