Literati is pleased to welcome Rebecca J. Kinney and Stephen M. Ward for a discussion of their recent books about Detroit and the people who form its heart.
What is the “new Detroit” that everyone keeps talking about? In Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier, Rebecca J. Kinney reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit’s rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. She tackles key questions about the future of postindustrial America, and shows how the narratives of Detroit’s history are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness.
Rebecca J. Kinney, who grew up in metropolitan Detroit, is assistant professor in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University.
In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs details both the personal and the political dimensions of the Boggses’ lives, highlighting the vital contributions these two figures made to black activist thinking. At once a dual biography of two crucial figures and a vivid portrait of Detroit as a center of activism, Ward’s book restores the Boggses, and the intellectual strain of black radicalism they shaped, to their rightful place in postwar American history.
Stephen Ward is associate professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) and the Residential College at the University of Michigan. He is also a board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership in Detroit.
Reading by Richard Solomon, a prominent local developmental pediatrician who is also a widely published, prize-winning poet. Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
All invited to read and discuss their poetry or short stories. Bring about 6 copies of your work to share. Hosted by local poets and former college English teachers Joe Kelty and Ed Morin.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Storytellers Guild members present a program of old tales and personal stories for grownups.
Free; donations accepted. annarborstorytelling.org, facebook.com/annarborstorytellers. 665-2757.
Storytellers Guild members present a program of old tales and personal stories for grownups.
Free; donations accepted. annarborstorytelling.org, facebook.com/annarborstorytellers. 665-2757.
Readings by U-M creative writing grad students, including fiction writer Sena Moon and poet Joseph Harms.
7 p.m., UMMA Auditorium, 525 S. State. Free. 615-3710.
The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Readings by Kathleen McGookey, a widely published poet from the Grand Rapids area who recently published the prose poem collection Heart in a Jar, and Gregory Loselle, a Gabriel Richard English teacher (and former U-M Hopwood Award winner) who has published 4 chapbooks, including the recent About the House.Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Literati is excited to welcome author Tiya Miles who will be discussing her new book Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits
About Dawn of Detroit:
Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest’s iconic city: Detroit.
In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree—both native and African American—in the frontier outpost of Detroit, a place wildly remote yet at the center of national and international conflict. Skillfully assembling fragments of a distant historical record, Miles introduces new historical figures and unearths struggles that remained hidden from view until now. The result is fascinating history, little explored and eloquently told, of the limits of freedom in early America, one that adds new layers of complexity to the story of a place that exerts a strong fascination in the media and among public intellectuals, artists, and activists.
A book that opens the door on a completely hidden past, The Dawn of Detroit is a powerful and elegantly written history, one that completely changes our understanding of slavery’s American legacy.
Tiya Miles is the recipient of a 2011 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and is a professor at the University of Michigan in the departments of American culture, Afro-American and African studies, history, women’s studies, and in the Native American Studies Program. She lives in Ann Arbor.
All invited to read and discuss their poetry or short stories. Bring about 6 copies of your work to share. Hosted by local poets and former college English teachers Joe Kelty and Ed Morin.
7-9 p.m., Crazy Wisdom, 114 S. Main. Free. 665-2757
Literati is excited to welcome Katie Willingham who will be reading from her new poetry collection Unlikely Designs
About Unlikely Designs
A collection intent on worrying the boundaries between natural and unnatural, human and not, Unlikely Designs draws far-ranging source material from the back channels of knowledge-making: the talk pages of Wikipedia, the personal writings of Charles Darwin, the love advice doled out by chatbots, and the eclectic inclusions on the Golden Record time capsule. It is here we discover the allure of the index, what pleasure there is in bending it to our own devices. At the same time, these poems also remind us that logic is often reckless, held together by nothing more than syntactical short circuits—well, I mean, sorry, yes—prone to cracking under closer scrutiny. Returning us again and again to these gaps, Katie Willingham reveals how any act of preservation is inevitably an act of curation, an outcry against the arbitrary, by attempting to make what is precious also what survives.
Katie Willingham teaches writing at the University of Michigan.
