Literati is excited to welcome Kathryn Remlinger and her new book Yooper Talk: Dialect as Identity in Michigan’s Upper Penisula
About Yooper Talk:
Yooper Talk is a fresh and significant contribution to understanding regional language and culture in North America. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan—known as “the UP”—is historically, geographically, and culturally distinct. Struggles over land, labor, and language during the last 150 years have shaped the variety of English spoken by resident Yoopers, as well as how they are viewed by outsiders.
Drawing on sixteen years of fieldwork, including interviews with seventy-five lifelong residents of the UP, Kathryn Remlinger examines how the idea of a unique Yooper dialect emerged. Considering UP English in relation to other regional dialects and their speakers, she looks at local identity, literacy practices, media representations, language attitudes, notions of authenticity, economic factors, tourism, and contact with immigrant and Native American languages. The book also explores how a dialect becomes a recognizable and valuable commodity: Yooper talk (or “Yoopanese”) is emblazoned on t-shirts, flags, postcards, coffee mugs, and bumper stickers.
Yooper Talk explains linguistic concepts with entertaining examples for general readers and also contributes to interdisciplinary discussions of dialect and identity in sociolinguistics, anthropology, dialectology, and folklore.
“Although humorous songs poke fun at Yoopers’ words and customs, Remlinger takes this place and its people very seriously. She explains how history, ethnicity, environment, economic changes, tourism, and especially language have created a colorful and distinctive regional dialect and identity.” —Larry Lankton,Hollowed Ground: Copper Mining and Community Building on Lake Superior
Kathryn A. Remlinger is a professor of linguistics in the Department of English at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan.
Literati is excited to welcome Amos N. Guiora and his new book The Crime of Complicity
Complicity is a ground-breaking examination of the legal culpability of the bystander told through the lens of the author’s family experiences in the Holocaust. It provides an exploration of three distinct events: the death marches; the German occupation of Holland; and the German occupation of Hungary, all of which allow an in-depth discussion of the role of the bystander in varied circumstances. Through a narrative of his parents’ stories, Amos Guiora, Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, author, and former Lieutenant Colonel in the Israel Defense Force, poses the question of whether there can and should be legal liability in deciding not to act to aid another person in distress. It draws upon a wide range of historical, psychological, sociological and archival material in an effort to determine the legal and moral responsibility of the bystander.
Amos N. Guiora is Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, the University of Utah and Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) in the Israel Defense Force. He is actively involved in the effort to legislate Holocaust-Genocide education in Utah public schools. He is the author of several books, including Freedom from Religion: Rights and National Security (2009) and Tolerating Intolerance: The Price of Protecting Extremism (2014).
The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is pleased to welcome Daniel Pink, author of New York Times best-sellers A Whole New Mind, Drive, and To Sell is Human, to speak at Hill Auditorium. During his presentation, “The Mind of the Future: How to Survive an Outsourced, Automated Age,” Pink will discuss the shift from the information age to the conceptual age and how to prepare for the future world of work. Pink was named one of the top 10 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, and his TED Talk on the science of motivation is one of the most-watched of all time with more than 19 million views.
Doors open at 6:00pm. This event is free and open to the public.
Hill Auditorium, 825 N. University Ave. Free. michiganrosspr@umich.edu
This event is a ticketed event which includes the purchase of the trade paperback copy of ‘The Lost City of the Monkey God’. This event will include a 45-minute audio/visual presentation as well as a Q&A section and then the signing portion of the event. This event will focus on Douglas Preston’s non-fiction book and not about his books with Lee Child.
Tickets are available in the store only or by calling 734.662.0600.
An ancient curse. A stunning medical mystery. And a pioneering journey into the unknown heart of the world’s densest jungle.
Since the days of conquistador Hernan Cortes, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization. Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn’t until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.
DOUGLAS PRESTON worked as a writer and editor for the American Museum of Natural History and taught writing at Princeton University. He has written for The New Yorker, Natural History, National Geographic, Harper’s, Smithsonian, and The Atlantic. The author of several acclaimed nonfiction books–including the bestseller The Monster of Florence–Preston is also the co-author with Lincoln Child of the bestselling series of novels featuring FBI agent Pendergast.
Literati is thrilled to welcome designer Oliver Uberti and his new book Where the Animals Go.
For thousands of years, tracking animals meant following footprints. Now satellites, drones, camera traps, cellphone networks, and accelerometers reveal the natural world as never before. Where the Animals Go is the first book to offer a comprehensive, data-driven portrait of how creatures like ants, otters, owls, turtles, and sharks navigate the world. Based on pioneering research by scientists at the forefront of the animal-tracking revolution, James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s stunning, four-color charts and maps tell fascinating stories of animal behavior. These astonishing infographics explain how warblers detect incoming storms using sonic vibrations, how baboons make decisions, and why storks prefer garbage dumps to wild forage; they follow pythons racing through the Everglades, a lovelorn wolf traversing the Alps, and humpback whales visiting undersea mountains. Where the Animals Go is a triumph of technology, data science, and design, bringing broad perspective and intimate detail to our understanding of the animal kingdom
“Where the Animals Go is beautiful and thrilling, a combination of the best in science and exposition, and a joy to study cover to cover.”—Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University
“This book is beautiful as well as informative and inspiring. There is no doubt it will help in our fight to save wildlife and wild habitats.” – Jane Goodall
Oliver Uberti is an award-winning designer and visual journalist and was previously senior design editor at National Geographic. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Tonight Literati is thrilled to host author and translator Clayton Eshleman in conversation with Keith Taylor on the work of Aimé Césaire
The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire gathers all of Cesaire’s celebrated verse into one bilingual edition. The French portion is comprised of newly established first editions of Césaire’s poetic œuvre made available in French in 2014 under the title Poésie, Théâtre, Essais et Discours, edited by A. J. Arnold and an international team of specialists. To prepare the English translations, the translators started afresh from this French edition. Included here are translations of first editions of the poet’s early work, prior to political interventions in the texts after 1955, revealing a new understanding of Cesaire’s aesthetic and political trajectory. A truly comprehensive picture of Cesaire’s poetry and poetics is made possible thanks to a thorough set of notes covering variants, historical and cultural references, and recurring figures and structures, a scholarly introduction and a glossary. This book provides a new cornerstone for readers and scholars in 20th century poetry, African diasporic literature, and postcolonial studies.
Clayton Eshleman is the author of over one hundred books, and the major American translator of Césaire
Keith Taylor teaches at the University of Michigan. He has published many books over the years: collections of poetry, a collection of very short stories, co-edited volumes of essays and fiction, and a volume of poetry translated from Modern Greek.
Ann Arborite Paul Dimond discusses his experiences doing research for his historical novel set in Ann Arbor and northern Michigan in the 1st half of the 20th century. He is joined by his wife, Marty, who wrote the poems by the titular character that appear in the novel. Signing.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL multipurpose room (lower level), 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4555.[
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
What happens when you fully commit yourself to love? Endless good, insists Scott Stabile, who found that out by overcoming plenty of bad. His parents were murdered when he was fourteen. Nine years later, his brother died of a heroin overdose. Soon after that, Scott joined a cult that dominated his life for thirteen years before he summoned the courage to walk away. In Big Love,his insightful and refreshingly honest collection of personal essays, Scott relates these profound experiences as well as everyday struggles and triumphs in ways that are universally applicable, uplifting, and laugh- out-loud funny. Whether silencing shame, rebounding after failure, or moving forward despite fears, Scott shares hard-won insights that consistently return readers to love, both of themselves and others.
Native Detroiter Jessica Care Moore discusses her visual art installation and collection of poems that honors the life of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Texas in 2015, 3 days after being arrested during a traffic stop.
5:10 p.m., Michigan Theater. Free. 668-8463.
