Calendar

Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for Susan Stellin and Graham MacIndoe’s visit to Ann Arbor. Susan and Graham will discuss their book Chancers: Addiction, Prison, Recovery, Love at the University of Michigan, sponsored by the Crime and Justice Minor Program.

In this powerful dual memoir, a reporter and a photographer tell their gripping story of falling in love, the heroin habit that drove them apart, and the unlikely way a criminal conviction brought them back together.

From their harrowing portrayal of the ravages of addiction to the stunning chain of events that led to Graham’s arrest and imprisonment at Rikers Island, Chancersunfolds in alternating chapters that offer two perspectives on a relationship that ultimately endures against long odds. Susan, a tenacious reporter, follows Graham down the rabbit hole of the American criminal justice system, determined to keep him from becoming another casualty of the war on drugs. Graham gives a stark, riveting description of his slide from brownstone Brooklyn to a prison cell, his gut-wrenching efforts to get clean, and his fight to avoid getting exiled far away from his son and the life he built over twenty years.

Beautifully written, brutally honest, yet filled with suspense and hope, Chancerswill resonate with anyone who has been touched by the heartache of addiction, the nightmare of incarceration, or the tough choice of leaving or staying with someone who is struggling on the road to recovery.

Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for the Author’s Forum’s presentationof “Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method,” a conversation with Joan Kee and David Chung.

A crucial artistic movement of twentieth-century Korea, Tansaekhwa (monochromatic painting) also became one of its most famous and successful. In this full-color, richly illustrated account—the first of its kind in English—Joan Kee provides a fresh interpretation of the movement’s emergence and meaning that sheds new light on the history of abstraction, twentieth-century Asian art, and contemporary art in general. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the most controversial and influential artistic movement in contemporary Korean art. With detailed formal analysis on the important artworks and locating them within the broader historical and intellectual framework, Joan Kee vividly portrays how Korean artists responded to the international art world and positioned Tansaekhwa as an alternative to Euro-American art. Contemporary Korean Art makes essential reading for anyone interested in the non-Western artists’ negotiations to global art in the twentieth century.

Literati is delighted to be the bookseller for the DISC Distinguished Lecture, “Gender and Sexuality in the Islamic Culture,” delivered by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shirin Ebadi. This event is hosted by the Islamic Studies Program and co-sponosored by the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, International Institute, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, and Law School.

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, former judge, and human rights activist. On October 10, 2003, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights – especially women’s, children’s, and refugee rights. She was the first Iranian to ever receive the prize. Ebadi became Iran’s first female judge when she was just 23 years old. She also became the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to be awarded the Nobel peace prize. Despite initially supporting the Iranian revolution like many Iranians, Ebadi soon became its scourge. Although described as “the worst nightmare of Iran’s hardline clerics,” her fight for human rights, particularly those for women, is not anti-religion. “I am against patriarchy, not Islam,” she says.

Demoted to a secretary in her own court by the regime, which considered women unsuitable to be judges, she set up her own pro-bono law practice to focus on injustices in the legal system, acting for political dissidents and on child-abuse cases. Despite being put on a death list by the regime, Dr. Ebadi became the country’s most high-profile human rights activist, founding the Human Rights Defenders Centre and helping to found the One Million Signatures Campaign. This grassroots campaign collected 1 million signatures from women in support of changing discriminatory laws. The campaign has won numerous international prizes (including the 2009 Reach All Women in War Anna Politkovskaya Award), but its members have also been harassed and even jailed.

Shirin Ebadi lived in Tehran, but she has been in exile in the UK since June 2009 due to the increase in persecution of Iranian citizens who are critical of the current regime. In 2004, she was listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the “100 most powerful women in the world.” She is also included in a published list of the “100 most influential women of all time.”

Ebadi will be introduced by Bridgette Carr, clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan.