Novelist and poet Ha Jin\, who won the National Book Award in 1999 for Waiting\, will discuss his new collection of short stories\, A Good Fall.
Set in the city of Flushing\, New York – which hosts a large immigrant Chinese community - these twelve stories explore the myriad challenges experienced by recent transplants to the United States. Jin deftly probes the loneliness\, dislocation\, and anxiety his characters suffer\, along with their excitement in new surroundings\, the chafing of one generation against another\, and the inevitable fear that transpires when the familiar past gives way to the often incomprehensible present\: Americanized-children clash with their traditionalist elders in scenarios that play out in countless immigrant families\; a botched suicide results in a new life that could never have been imagined\; a tender relationship is described between a lonely composer and his girlfriend’s parakeet. Through humor\, detail\, and an ever- poetic point of view\, Ha Jin creates a bouquet of resilient\, courageous individuals. A Good Fall has been highly praised as “marvelous – one of the most powerful books of the year\,” “not to be missed – a beautifully written\, elegant\, subtle and yet always precise collection” and “Ha Jin’s best book yet.”
The free\, hour-long interview is a partnership between the Chicago Public Library and 98.7WFMT radio\, with a taping at 6\:00 p.m. in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium at the Harold Washington Library Center\, 400 S. State Street. The interview will be broadcast at noon on Sunday\, January 17th. The Seminary Co-Op Bookstores sells books at the event\, which is underwritten by Graver Capital Management LLC. The events are free\, no reservations required\, with seating on a first-come basis.
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20120522T195910Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100115T000000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100115T000000Z UID:http://www.semcoop.com/event/seth-l-sanders-invention-hebrew URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.semcoop.com/event/seth-l-sanders-invention-hebrew SUMMARY:Seth L. Sanders - The Invention of Hebrew DESCRIPTION:The Invention of Hebrew is the first book to approach the Bible in light of recent epigraphic discoveries on the extreme antiquity of the alphabet and its use as a deliberate and meaningful choice. Hebrew was more than just a way of transmitting information\; it was a vehicle of political symbolism and self-representation.
Seth L. Sanders connects the Bible's distinctive linguistic form - writing down a local spoken language - to a cultural desire to speak directly to people\, summoning them to join a new community that the text itself helped call into being. Addressing the people of Israel through a vernacular literature\, Hebrew texts reimagined their audience as a public. By comparing Biblical documents with related ancient texts in Hebrew\, Ugaritic\, and Babylonian\, this book shows Hebrew's distinctiveness as a self-conscious political language. Illuminating the enduring stakes of Biblical writing\, Sanders demonstrates how Hebrew assumed and promoted a source of power previously unknown in written literature\: "\;the people"\; as the protagonist of religion and politics.
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20120522T195910Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100120T000000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100120T000000Z UID:http://www.semcoop.com/event/alexander-aciman-emmett-rensin-twitterature URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.semcoop.com/event/alexander-aciman-emmett-rensin-twitterature SUMMARY:Alexander Aciman & Emmett Rensin - Twitterature DESCRIPTION:Perhaps while reading Shakespeare you've asked yourself\, What exactly is Hamlet trying to tell me? Why must he mince words and muse in lyricism and\, in short\, whack about the shrub? But if the Prince of Denmark had a Twitter account and an iPhone\, he could tell his story in real time - and concisely! Hence the genius of Twitterature.
Hatched in a dorm room at the brain trust that is the University of Chicago\, Twitterature is a hilarious and irreverent re-imagining of the classics as a series of 140-character tweets from the protagonist. Providing a crash course in more than eighty of the world's best-known books\, from Homer to Harry Potter\, Virgil to Voltaire\, Tolstoy to Twilight and Dante to The Da Vinci Code. It's the ultimate Cliffs Notes. Because as great as the classics are\, who has time to read those big\, long books anymore?
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20120522T195910Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100128T000000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100128T000000Z UID:http://www.semcoop.com/event/garry-wills-bomb-power-modern-presidency-and-national-security-state URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.semcoop.com/event/garry-wills-bomb-power-modern-presidency-and-national-security-state SUMMARY:Garry Wills - Bomb Power\: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State DESCRIPTION:In Bomb Power\, Garry Wills reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots-by dramatically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a national security state-in ways still felt today. A masterful reckoning from one of America's preeminent historians\, Bomb Power draws a direct line from the Manhattan Project to the usurpations of George W. Bush.
The invention of the atomic bomb was a triumph of official secrecy and military discipline-the project was covertly funded at the behest of the president and\, despite its massive scale\, never discovered by Congress or the press. This concealment was perhaps to be expected in wartime\, but Wills persuasively argues that the Manhattan Project then became a model for the covert operations and overt authority that have defined American government in the nuclear era. The wartime emergency put in place during World War II extended into the Cold War and finally the war on terror\, leaving us in a state of continuous war alert for sixty-eight years and counting.
The bomb forever changed the institution of the presidency since only the president controls "\;the button"\; and\, by extension\, the fate of the world. Wills underscores how radical a break this was from the division of powers established by our founding fathers and how it in turn has enfeebled Congress and the courts. The bomb also placed new emphasis on the president's military role\, creating a cult around the commander in chief. The tendency of modern presidents to flaunt military airs\, Wills points out\, is entirely a postbomb phenomenon. Finally\, the Manhattan Project inspired the vast secretive apparatus of the national security state\, including intelligence agencies such as the CIA and NSA\, which remain largely unaccountable to Congress and the American people.
Wills recounts how\, following World War II\, presidential power increased decade by decade until reaching its stunning apogee with the Bush administration. Both provocative and illuminating\, Bomb Power casts the history of the postwar period in a new light and sounds an alarm about the continued threat to our Constitution.
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20120522T195910Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100205T000000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100205T000000Z UID:http://www.semcoop.com/event/world-beyond-headlines-deborah-brautigam URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.semcoop.com/event/world-beyond-headlines-deborah-brautigam SUMMARY:World Beyond the Headlines\: Deborah Brautigam DESCRIPTION:Is China a rogue donor\, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty\, as the Chinese claim? This well-timed book provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities\, explaining what the Chinese are doing\, how they do it\, how much aid they give\, and how it all fits into their "\;going global"\; strategy. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture\, industry\, natural resources\, and governance\, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer.
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20120522T195910Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100209T000000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100209T000000Z UID:http://www.semcoop.com/event/jedediah-berry-manual-detection URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.semcoop.com/event/jedediah-berry-manual-detection SUMMARY:Jedediah Berry - The Manual of Detection DESCRIPTION:Reminiscent of imaginative fiction from Jorge Luis Borges to Jasper Fforde yet dazzlingly original\, The Manual of Detection marks the debut of a prodigious young talent. Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge\, imperious detective agency located in an unnamed city always slick with rain. When Travis Sivart\, the agency's most illustrious detective\, is murdered\, Unwin is suddenly promoted and must embark on an utterly bizarre quest for the missing investigator that leads him into the darkest corners of his soaking\, somnolent city. What ensues is a noir fantasy of exquisite craftsmanship\, as taut as it is mind- blowing\, that draws readers into a dream world that will change what they think about how they think.
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20120522T195910Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100210T000000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100210T000000Z UID:http://www.semcoop.com/event/jonathan-metzl-protest-psychosis-how-schizophrenia-became-black-disease URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.semcoop.com/event/jonathan-metzl-protest-psychosis-how-schizophrenia-became-black-disease SUMMARY:Jonathan Metzl - The Protest Psychosis\: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease DESCRIPTION:THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO A LATER DATE.
Revolution was in the air in the 1960s. Civil rights protests demanded attention on the airwaves and in the streets. Anger gave way to revolt\, and revolt provided the elusive promise of actual change. But a very different civil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia\, Michigan. Here\, far from the national glare of sit-ins\, boycotts\, or riots\, African American men suddenly appeared in the asylum’s previously white\, locked wards. Some of these men came to the attention of the state after participating in civil rights demonstrations\, while others were sent by the military\, the penal system\, or the police. Though many of the men hailed from Detroit\, ambulances and paddy wagons brought men from other urban centers as well. Once at Ionia\, psychiatrists classified these men under a single diagnosis\: schizophrenia.
In The Protest Psychosis\, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American men at the Ionia State Hospital\, and how events at Ionia mirrored national conversations that increasingly linked blackness\, madness\, and civil rights. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents—from scientific literature\, to music lyrics\, to riveting\, tragic hospital charts—Metzl shows how associations between schizophrenia and blackness emerged during the 1960s and 1970s in ways that directly reflected national political events. As he demonstrates\, far from resulting from the racist intentions of individual doctors or the symptoms of specific patients\, racialized schizophrenia grew from a much wider set of cultural shifts that defined the thoughts\, actions\, and even the politics of black men as being inherently insane.
Ultimately\, The Protest Psychosis provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions\, even during our current\, seemingly post-race era of genetics\, pharmacokinetics\, and brain scans.
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