This event is the second in a series of three events curated by Cortney Lamar Charleston in collaboration with The BreakBeat Poets and Haymarket Books, to celebrate the release of his new collection, Doppelgangbanger.
Cortney Lamar Charleston is joined by Patricia Smith for this event. NB: Nate Marshall was unable to join the event, but his work is read by Cortney.
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Speakers:
Nate Marshall is an award-winning author, editor, poet, playwright, performer, educator, speaker, and rapper. His book, Wild Hundreds, was honored with the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award. He is also an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and he also co-curates The BreakBeat Poets series for Haymarket Books. Marshall co-wrote the play "No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks with Eve Ewing", produced by Manual Cinema and commissioned by the Poetry Foundation. He also wrote the audio drama "Bruh Rabbit & The Fantastic Telling of Remington Ellis, Esq.", which was produced by Make-Believe Association. His last rap album, Grown, came out in 2015 with his group Daily Lyrical Product. His second book, FINNA, was released in 2020 from One World/Random House.
Nate was born at Roseland Community Hospital and raised in the West Pullman neighborhood of Chicago. He is a proud Chicago Public Schools alumnus. Nate completed his MFA in Creative Writing at The University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers' Program. He holds a B.A. in English and African American Diaspora Studies from Vanderbilt University. Marshall has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Poetry Foundation, and The University of Michigan. Nate loves his family and friends, Black people, dope art, literature, history, arguing about top 5 lists, and beating you in spades.
Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow, a collaboration with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson. Her other books include the poetry volumes Teahouse of the Almighty, Close to Death, Big Towns Big Talk, Life According to Motown; the children's book Janna and the Kings and the history Africans in America, a companion book to the award-winning PBS series. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tin House and in Best American Poetry, Best American Essays and Best American Mystery Stories. She co-edited The Golden Shovel Anthology—New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks and edited the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir.
She is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, a former fellow at both Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. Patricia is a Distinguished Professor for the City University of New York and an instructor in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada University and in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Post-Graduate Residency Program.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/OlnZUi3W1As
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
More Episodes
Mar 4, 2021
Text Messages: Creating Worlds with Words ft. Narcy and Lowkey (10-29-20)
Join independent artists Narcy and Lowkey for a wide-ranging conversation celebrating the release of Narcy’s debut book Text Messages.
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Independent hip-hop artists Narcy and Lowkey on art, technology, empire, and the struggle to survive the end of consumer capitalism.
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Text Messages is the first multi-genre collection by Montreal-based Iraqi hip-hop artist, activist, and professor Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman. Composed entirely on a smartphone during air travel and married to artwork from comrades, Narcy’s writing speaks of the existential crises experienced by diasporic children of war before and during imperialism in the age of the Internet.
Narcy 's verses span the space between hip-hop and manifesto, portraying a crumbling, end-stage capitalist society, visions for a new reality, and exposes the myth of multiculturalism in post-9/11 North America. The wordsmith hollows and transmogrifies the grotesque excess of the West by juxtaposing McLife with images of death, destruction, and trauma in the East.
From the depths of apathetic consumerism arises a voice of spiritual self-realization that explodes the misrepresented, mythical monolith of Islam in the West and with the rubble builds healing through intelligent resistance and radical love.
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Real name Yassin Alsalman, Narcy is a musician, director, professor, writer, and actor. He teaches a hip-hop production class and a cultural study of rap and politics at Concordia University. He is the cofounder of WeAreTheMedium, a culture point for publishing, media, and the arts. He currently resides in Montreal, has his heart in the Arab world, and is grounded on planet Earth. Most importantly, he is a father of two.
Lowkey is a hip hop artist and political campaigner. He has worked with Immortal Technique , Wretch 32, Akala, Dead Prez and Outlawz. He is part of the super group Mongrel alongside members of the Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles and Reverend And The Makers. The band released their album Better than Heavy in tandem with the Independent newspaper.
In Canada order the book from Fernwood Publishers: https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/text-messages
In the US and World: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1474-text-messages
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/1vo8CNFu2w0
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
The Virus, The Climate, The Alternative: Solutions to Capital’s Crises (10-29-20)
Join leading ecosocialist authors and activists Andreas Malm and Thea Riofrancos for a discussion of how to stop the climate crisis.
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From annual ‘once a centuries’ fires, to ‘storms to end all storms’ making landfall every hurricane season, the signs that capitalist climate change represents a civilizational threat have never been more ominously evident. It has become impossible to ignore the dire need to move beyond green tinkering to an overhaul of the entire system, lest we be left with a charred and blasted husk where once there was a planet. As the global fever rages, we are faced with the choice of "Ecosocialism or Barbecue."
In his new book, Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, leading environmental thinker, Andreas Malm points to the state mobilizations across the globe to combat the coronavirus as an example of the scale of intervention that will be required to execute the just-transition we need.
If it is possible to conjure trillions of dollars to combat an invisible, epidemiological threat, why is the climate emergency not greeted with similar sized programs?
Malm will be joined for this virtual teach-in by fellow activist and author Thea Riofrancos—whose new book Resource Radicals looks at lessons for our movement from the experience in Ecuador— for a conversation that will touch on this question and many more. ----------------------------------------------------
Speakers:
Andreas Malm is a scholar of human ecology, and the author of Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, The Progress of this Storm and Fossil Capital, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.
Thea Riofrancos is an assistant professor of political science at Providence College, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2020-2022), and a Radcliffe Institute Fellow (2020-2021). Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020) and her co-authored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and serves on the steering committee of the organization's Ecosocialist Working Group.
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Order a copy of Andreas Malm's Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3704-corona-climate-chronic-emergency
Order his other books:
The Progress of this Storm: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3140-the-progress-of-this-storm
Fossil Capital: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2002-fossil-capital
Order a copy of Thea Riofrancos's "Resource Radicals": https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781478008484
Order her other books:
A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3107-a-planet-to-win
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/HFK8BPQfyXE
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
Building Abolition Now! Planting Seeds, Growing Abolitionist Futures (10-29-20)
Join Critical Resistance and the AbolitionNOW coalition for the final session in their series of virtual teach-in's.
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The prison industrial complex (PIC) is sold as a solution that you turn to for all of your problems but in reality communities need specific solutions that are tailored and not carceral. This panel will explore what safety actually means and a vision for keeping communities safe from harm without prisons, police and systems of state punishment.
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Speakers:
Nia Umoja
Solange Azor- BYP100
Mirian Porras - Poder Emma
Moderator - Cory Lira - Critical Resistance
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This event is presented by the AbolitionNOW Network and cosponsored by Haymarket Books, an independent, radical, non-profit publisher. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our continuing to do this important work.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/WLQqzuiTMYQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance, and Empire with David McNally (11-5-20)
For the first HM online panel this year, please join us for a discussion of David McNally's book: 'Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance'.
'In most accounts of the origins of money we are offered pleasant tales in which it arises to the mutual benefit of all parties as a result of barter. In this groundbreaking study David McNally reveals the true story of money’s origins and development as one of violence and human bondage. Money’s emergence and its transformation are shown to be intimately connected to the buying and selling of slaves and the waging of war. Blood and Money demonstrates the ways that money has “internalized” its violent origins, making clear that it has become a concentrated force of social power and domination. Where Adam Smith observed that monetary wealth represents “command over labor,” this paradigm shifting book amends his view to define money as comprising the command over persons and their bodies.'(Text taken from the book cover.)
Join us for this discussion with David McNally (author, editor of Spectre Journal, Professor of History at University of Houston), joined by Maia Pal (HM editorial board) & Tithi Bhattacharya.
PLEASE NOTE: All events for HM Online are free to register, however we would ask comrades who are able to please consider supporting the Historical Materialism project.
Please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism journal, published by BRILL, who are currently offering a 25% discount on individual subscriptions, valid until the end of the year. To use the offer, quote the discount code 70997 when subscribing at: www.brill.com/hima
Also, please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism book series through Haymarket Books. For $25 per month, this subscription gets you every new title from the Historical Materialism series when it is released (as long as your subscription remains active) plus a 50% discount on *all* Haymarket books titles via our website. Non-US subscribers will be charged an extra $20/month for international shipping.
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/894-haymarket-book-club-historical-materialism-series
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/v6psUWDkUjc
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
Engels at 200 with Michael Roberts & Camilla Royle (11-7-20)
Marx is often accused of what has been called a Promethean vision of human social organisation, namely that human beings, using their superior brains, knowledge and technical prowess, can and should impose their will on the rest of the planet or what is called ‘nature’ – for better or worse.
On the 200th anniversary of his birth, Engels too must be saved from the same charge.Actually, Engels was well ahead of Marx (yet again) in connecting the destruction and damage to the environment that industrialisation was causing.
Engels’ major work (written with Marx’s help), The Dialectics of Nature, written in the years up to 1883, just after Marx’s death, is often subject to attack as extending Marx’s materialist conception of history as applied to humans, into nature in a non-Marxist way. And yet, in his book, Engels could not be clearer on the dialectical relation between humans and nature. it's time to revise the revisionists.
Engels and Ecology The Urban Political Ecology of Friedrich Engels - Camilla Royle
This paper takes the 200th anniversary of Engels’s birth in November 1820 to rethink his contribution to what we might today call urban political ecology. Marxist thinkers within critical environmental geography, have long argued for a focus on the natural processes that constitute the urban environment, demonstrating how the urban is shaped by both social and ecological processes. Their approach is rooted in a dialectical rather than a mechanistic materialism. While some have cited Engels as an early advocate of these views, others – such as Neil Smith in Uneven Development – have been more critical of his views on nature, seeing them as representing a dualist approach alien to Marx’s understanding. This paper will address these debates by highlighting Engels’s work on housing conditions, air and water pollution as well as his writings on infectious disease pandemics of the time such as typhus and cholera. It will show how Engels’s approach to public health and his accusations of “social murder” perpetuated by the ruling class predates the analysis of structural violence developed by critical theorists of global health over a century later. It will suggest that Engels’s understanding of how capitalist social relations produced an urban environment detrimental to workers aligns with Marx’s views.
PLEASE NOTE: All events for HM Online are free to register, however we would ask comrades who are able to please consider supporting the Historical Materialism project.
Please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism journal, published by BRILL, who are currently offering a 25% discount on individual subscriptions, valid until the end of the year. To use the offer, quote the discount code 70997 when subscribing at: www.brill.com/hima
Also, please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism book series through Haymarket Books. For $25 per month, this subscription gets you every new title from the Historical Materialism series when it is released (as long as your subscription remains active) plus a 50% discount on *all* Haymarket books titles via our website. Non-US subscribers will be charged an extra $20/month for international shipping.
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/894-haymarket-book-club-historical-materialism-series
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/EbGrV9UzYo4
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
The 2020 US Election w/ Kali Akuno, Meagan Day, & Peter Drucker(11-7-20)
The 2020 US election may be the biggest crisis of bourgeois democracy since the defeat of Black Reconstruction. The past several years and weeks have been rich in lessons about the nature of the US state and its electoral system. Issues that the panelists will discuss include: the ongoing far right threat and the changing character of the Republican Party; the nature of the Democratic Party and what the left can and cannot use it for; the roots of the current political crisis in the economic crisis going back to 2008, and the impact of the pandemic; and the intersections of class, race, gender and sexuality in this current crisis.
Meagan Day is a staff writer at Jacobin magazine and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She is the co-author with Micah Uetricht of Bigger than Bernie: How We Go From the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism (Verso, April 2020). Her articles have also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Peter Drucke's long years as a socialist and queer activist began in the US in 1978, when he was 19. He is the author of Max Shachtman and His Left and of Warped: Gay Normality and Queer Anti-Capitalism (Haymarket). He lives in the Netherlands.
Please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism journal, published by BRILL, who are currently offering a 25% discount on individual subscriptions, valid until the end of the year. To use the offer, quote the discount code 70997 when subscribing at: www.brill.com/hima
Also, please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism book series through Haymarket Books. For $25 per month, this subscription gets you every new title from the Historical Materialism series when it is released (as long as your subscription remains active) plus a 50% discount on *all* Haymarket books titles via our website. Non-US subscribers will be charged an extra $20/month for international shipping.
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/894-haymarket-book-club-historical-materialism-series
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/yenbB5fxkY4
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
