Join us for an evening featuring Juan Cole. Juan is an Ann Arbor local and professor of history at the University of Michigan. A revered public intellectual, he is the author and creator of the award-winning blog Informed Comment, which averages 4.5 million page views a year. He is the author of Napoleon’s Egypt, Engaging the Muslim World, and The New Arabs and has appeared on numerous television programs including the PBS Newshour, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, ABC’s Nightline, and The Colbert Report.
Event Details
Seating at the event will be first-come first-served. This event will be a standing-room crowd, so if you require a seat for medical reasons, please contact us in advance to make arrangements.
About the Book
In the midst of the dramatic seventh-century war between two empires, Muhammad was a spiritual seeker in search of community and sanctuary.
Many observers stereotype Islam and its scripture as inherently extreme or violent-a narrative that has overshadowed the truth of its roots. In this masterfully told account, preeminent Middle East expert Juan Cole takes us back to Islam’s-and the Prophet Muhammad’s-origin story.
Cole shows how Muhammad came of age in an era of unparalleled violence. The eastern Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire of Iran fought savagely throughout the Near East and Asia Minor. Muhammad’s profound distress at the carnage of his times led him to envision an alternative movement, one firmly grounded in peace. The religion Muhammad founded, Islam, spread widely during his lifetime, relying on soft power instead of military might, and sought armistices even when militarily attacked. Cole sheds light on this forgotten history, reminding us that in the Qur’an, the legacy of that spiritual message endures.
A vibrant history that brings to life the fascinating and complex world of the Prophet, Muhammad is the story of how peace is the rule and not the exception for one of the world’s most practiced religions.
About the Author
Juan Cole is a professor of history at the University of Michigan. A revered public intellectual, he is the author and creator of the award-winning blog Informed Comment, which averages 4.5 million page views a year. He is the author of Napoleon’s Egypt, Engaging the Muslim World, and The New Arabs and has appeared on numerous television programs including the PBS Newshour, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, ABC’s Nightline, and The Colbert Report. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.
Feb. 11, 12, 18, 19, & 21.
U-M students, nominated by their instructors, read their poems and short stories. Light refreshments.
7-8:30 p.m., U-M Shapiro Undergrad Library Lobby, 919 South University. Free. 764-7493.
Literati is thrilled to welcome back author Susan Dennard who will be sharing her new novel Bloodwitch, the latest in the Witchlands series.
About Bloodwitch:
Susan Dennard’s New York Times bestselling, young adult epic fantasy Witchlands series continues with the story of the Bloodwitch Aeduan.
Aeduan has teamed up with the Threadwitch Iseult and the magical girl Owl to stop a bloodthirsty horde of raiders preparing to destroy a monastery that holds more than just faith. But to do so, he must confront his own father, and his past
“Worldbuilding after my own heart. It’s so good it’s intimidating.”–Victoria Aveyard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Queen
Susan Dennard has come a long way from small-town Georgia. Working in marine biology, she got to travel the world — six out of seven continents (she’ll get to Asia one of these days!) — before she settled down as a full-time novelist and writing instructor. She is the author of the Something Strange and Deadly series, as well as the Witchlands series, which includes the New York Times bestselling Truthwitch and Windwitch. When not writing, she can be found hiking with her dogs, slaying darkspawn on her Xbox, or earning bruises at the dojo.
Every Wed. Members read and discuss poems around themes TBA. Followed by collaborative writing games and exercises. Attendees invited to read their poems. Snacks & socializing.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
Join us for an in conversation event featuring award winning author Dr. Randal Jelks, where he will discuss his most recent work, Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver and Muhammad Ali. His book explores the faith stories of four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali. Dr. Jelks will be available after the event for a book signing.
About the Book
In 1964, Muhammad Ali said of his decision to join the Nation of Islam: “I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want to be.”
This sentiment, the brash assertion of individual freedom, informs and empowers each of the four personalities profiled in this book. Randal Maurice Jelks shows that to understand the black American experience beyond the larger narratives of enslavement, emancipation, and Black Lives Matter, we need to hear the individual stories. Drawing on his own experiences growing up as a religious African American, he shows that the inner history of black Americans in the 20th century is a story worthy of telling.
This book explores the faith stories of four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali. It examines their autobiographical writings, interviews, speeches, letters, and memorable performances to understand how each of these figures used religious faith publicly to reconcile deep personal struggles, voice their concerns for human dignity, and reinvent their public image. For them, liberation was not simply defined by material or legal wellbeing, but by a spiritual search for community and personal wholeness.
About the Author
Randal Maurice Jelks is Professor of African and African American Studies and American Studies. He holds courtesy appointments in History, Religious Studies, and is the co-Editor of the journal American Studies. Jelks is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA in History), McCormick Theological Seminary (Masters of Divinity) and Michigan State University (Ph.D. in Comparative Black Histories). Jelks is also clergy person in thePresbyterian Church (USA). He is the author of the two award winning books African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights Struggle in Grand Rapids (The University of Illinois Press, 2006), which was awarded the 2006 State History Award, University and Commercial Press, Historical Society of Michigan andBenjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography (University of North Carolina Press 2012), awarded the 2013 Lillian Smith Book Award and the 2013 Literary Award, Black Caucus of the American Library Association. His forthcoming book is titled Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver and Muhammad Ali (Bloomsbury January 2019). Currently Jelks is writing a new book titled My Friends Call Me Benny: The Benjamin Mays Story for Young Readers. In addition serving as an executive producer of a two-part biographical documentary I, Too, Sing America: Langston Hughes Unfurled. Jelks has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center in Research Park Triangle, North Carolina and has held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at Masaryk University, Brno Czech Republic (2015), has been a Visiting Lecturer at University of Regensburg (2014), Regensburg, Germany and taught at the University of Ghana, Institute for African Studies (2001 and 2007)
Feb. 11, 12, 18, 19, & 21.
U-M students, nominated by their instructors, read their poems and short stories. Today includes RC writing student Jazzaray James. Light refreshments.
7-8:30 p.m., U-M Shapiro Undergrad Library Lobby, 919 South University. Free. 764-7493.
Literati is thrilled to host author Rachel DeWosking who will be visitng to share her latest YA novel Someday We Will Fly:
About Someday We Will Fly:
From the author of Blind, a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story set during World War II in Shanghai, one of the only places Jews without visas could find refuge.
Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940 and Lillia is fifteen when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn’t understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive?
Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi, whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in Warsaw when her family was circus performers. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a “gentlemen’s club” without her father’s knowledge.
But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war and the Japanese force the Americans in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they survive, caught in the crossfire?
Rachel DeWoskin spent her twenties in China as the unlikely star of a nighttime soap opera that inspired her memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing. She is the author of Repeat After Me and Big Girl Small, which received the American Library Association’s Alex Award for an adult book with special appeal to teen readers; Rachel’s conversations with young readers inspired her to write her first YA novel, Blind. Rachel is on the faculty of the University of Chicago, where she teaches creative writing. She lives in Chicago with her husband, playwright Zayd Dohrn, and their two daughters.
Rachel and her family spent six summers in Shanghai while she researched Someday We Will Fly.
Join us for a talk and signing with Arjun Alva. Arjun is a 6th Grader at Forsythe Middle School here in Ann Arbor. Arjun has always loved writing. It took him around 6 months to write “Adventures of Jimmy Hailbuster”. He is presently writing his second book.
Literati is proud to partner with the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health to have copies of Dr. Leonardo Trasande’s Sicker, Fatter, Poorer and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha’s What the Eyes Don’t See available for purchase at this event.
Come meet with Dr. Leonardo Trasande and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha at their book talk. Dr. Trasande’s book “Sicker, Fatter, Poorer: The Urgent Threat of Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals to Our Health and Future . . . and What We Can Do About It” and Dr. Hanna-Attisha’s book “What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City” feature important messages about environmental exposures to contaminants that have been associated with adverse health effects.
About Sicker, Fatter, Poorer:
Lurking in our homes, hiding in our offices, and polluting the air we breathe is something sinister. Something we’ve turned a blind eye to for far too long. Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a pediatrician, professor, and world-renowned researcher, tells the story of how our everyday surroundings are making us sicker, fatter, and poorer.
Dr. Trasande exposes the chemicals that disrupt our hormonal systems and damage our health in irreparable ways. He shows us where these chemicals hide–in our homes, our schools, at work, in our food, and countless other places we can’t control–as well as the workings of policy that protects the continued use of these chemicals in our lives. Drawing on extensive research and expertise, he outlines dramatic studies and emerging evidence about the rapid increases in neurodevelopmental, metabolic, reproductive, and immunological diseases directly related to the hundreds of thousands of chemicals that we are exposed to every day. Unfortunately, nowhere is safe.
But, thanks to Dr. Trasande’s work on the topic, and his commitment to effecting change, this book can help. Through a blend of narrative, scientific detective work, and concrete information about the connections between chemicals and disease, he shows us what we can do to protect ourselves and our families in the short-term, and how we can help bring the change we deserve.
About What the Eyes Don’t See:
Here is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water–and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don’t See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself–an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family’s activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice.
What the Eyes Don’t See is a riveting account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their–and all of our–children.
Literati is honored to welcome author Anissa Gray who will be reading from and discussing her debut novel The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls.
About The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls:
The Butler family has had their share of trials–as sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian can attest–but nothing prepared them for the literal trial that will upend their lives.
Althea, the eldest sister and substitute matriarch, is a force to be reckoned with and her younger sisters have alternately appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are as stunned as the rest of the small community when she and her husband Proctor are arrested, and in a heartbeat the family goes from one of the most respected in town to utter disgrace. The worst part is, not even her sisters are sure exactly what happened.
As Althea awaits her fate, Lillian and Viola must come together in the house they grew up in to care for their sister’s teenage daughters. What unfolds is a stunning portrait of the heart and core of an American family in a story that is as page-turning as it is important.
Anissa Gray is an Emmy and duPont-Columbia award-winning journalist at CNN Worldwide, responsible for helping to guide coverage of some of the most consequential stories of our time. She began her career at Reuters as a reporter, based in New York, covering business news and international finance. Born in St. Joseph, Michigan, Gray studied English and American literature at New York University. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her wife.
