“The poets and artists among us seem to have a clearer understanding of the disease of nationalism.”
–Howard Zinn
Historian and activist Howard Zinn died at the age of 87 this week. Zinn is best known for his fiery debates with liberals and conservatives alike. His 1980 work A People’s History of the United States (HarperCollins) became a bestseller, receiving endorsements from movie stars and activists alike. The book explored an alternative view of history that celebrated changemakers and eschewed a purely materialist reading of history — social justice activists receive more mention than politicians and the Morgans and Carnegies.
If you like A People’s History, check out James W. Loewens’ Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong. Loewen systematically surveyed twelve high school history textbooks and discovered surprising results. None featured any photos of the victims of war, most sugar-coated slavery, and any conflict that could be seen as a ‘loss’ was avoided. Worse, the authors didn’t have any good reason for omitting so many crucial truths: the books weren’t being censored.
Did you know, for example, that Helen Keller wasn’t famous for overcoming her disabilities during her time, but for being a fervent social activist who championed women’s equality? Or that Woodrow Wilson’s own racism helped tank the League of Nations, the predecessor to the United Nations?
Loewen has since followed Lies My Teacher Told Me with Teaching What Really Happened: How To Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History (Teacher’s College Press, 2009).
–Deji Olukotun
Playwright Lynn Nottage has received numerous awards for her groundbreaking work on the stage, including the MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award. A Brooklyn native, she regularly champions social justice issues in her plays. She was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her play Ruined, a hard-hitting tale of a group of women set in a brothel in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The women flee the ravages of internecine war and the scars of brutal, mutilating rapes. Yet the characters — even the men — offer touching moments of real warmth, all while united by a lilting soundtrack of Congolese music. Ruined will be staged at the Almeida Theatre in London in March 2010.
Nottage spoke with me about her life as an activist, her work as a dramatist, and the power of stories to effect social change.
READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE.
–Deji Olukotun
Photo by Susan Johann
Chronicle Books will donate 20% of the sales earned on every book sold on ChronicleBooks.com, Irreference.com, and KnockKnockStuff.com to the American Red Cross to aid relief in Haiti following the devastating earthquake.
The donations will be open for the next 2 weeks until January 31st. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chronicle is also holding a bake sale.
Clearly the relief effort will take much longer than this. Here are two books you can buy from Chronicle even outside the relief ‘window’ that will still put resources towards a good cause.
The Power of the Invisible Sun, by Bob Sager, supports refugee children from war-torn and developing countries around the world — it is even endorsed by Sting, the super-talented vocalist and activist. Proceeds help buy ‘indestructible’ soccer balls for youth around the globe.
The second is Cooking Up a Storm, a recipe book that features culinary delights from victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
–Deji Olukotun
Mohamed Keita of the Committee to Protect Journalists, who I interviewed for FictionthatMatters.org, has reported that a sports journalist was killed in the ambush on the Togo national team at the African Nations Cup that left three dead in Cabinda, Angola. The African Nations Cup decides the strongest team on the continent, and is widely seen as a preview of the upcoming FIFA World Cup in South Africa in 2010. Togo’s national team has since withdrawn from the tournament.
I love soccer and I write about it in my own fiction. My grandfather was from Togo. And another journalist has been lost.
A sad confluence of events. My heart goes out to the national team and I hope for a constructive, peaceful resolution to the conflict over oil in Angola. The authorities in Angola still want to hold games in the Cabinda region. Here’s hoping for a peaceful tournament.
–Deji Olukotun
Photo of Togolese soccer player Emmanuel Adebayor, playing for Arsenal, by wonker on a CreativeCommons License.
I really do think of homeless persons in the U.S. as being internal refugees, people who are fleeing economic hardships, not necessarily war, but the conditions that they face in many cases are similar to conditions that face refugee populations. Part of the connection to the work that I’m trying to share is the sense that, similar to refugee populations, these are people who did not choose to be in this situation.
–Eric Tars
Is housing a human right? Most definitely. Housing has served as a primary driver of the U.S. economy for over a decade, yet funding for government supported housing has plummeted. Human rights require that housing be treated as a social good and not just a market commodity. Protections in housing are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art. 25), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (Art. 11), and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Art. 5).
In the U.S., less than 3 percent of housing is public housing — and even those meager facilities are under threat. The economic crisis is also pushing more people into homelessness.
Eric Tars is the Director of Human Rights at the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. He is considered by his peers to be one of the foremost human rights activists working within the United States today. He’s on the front lines of the battle to realize housing as a human right and spoke with us about how literature has helped inspire him.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE.
