This Weeks' News

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October 18, 2022

 

At the end of September, as we have done for the past 2 decades, we commemorated banned books week.  During the last week of September, we gave out free constitutions, buttons, bookmarks and stickers to our customers.

 

This year’s display felt particularly painful.   It is not that books aren’t challenged every year.  They are.  But now those challenges seem to be coming from everywhere.  Whether it is a leftist challenge to a book like Huckleberry Finn, or the usual far right challenges to any LBGTQ books aimed at children or young adults (the adorable And Tango Makes Three for example), or a blatantly antisemitic attack on the graphic novel Maus by a school district in Tennessee.  

 

The challenges reported to ALA (the American Library Association) in 2021 represented the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling these lists more than 20 years ago. Eight months into 2022, book challenges were already on track to exceed 2021’s count.

 

If you speak with any teachers or librarians, try to show your support for their efforts to keep America reading, and reading freely.  They must be exhausted by all of this, but I never hear any that I know complain.

 

If you are so moved, please sign the petition the ABA (American Booksellers Association) has put together in support of the freedom to read: 

Banned books petition

 

And if you drop by the bookstore, we have free copies of the ‘Field Report 2021: Banned and Challenged Books’ compiled by the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the ALA.  Whether you buy something or not, we are happy to share.

 

October 21, 2022

 

Afterwords Chicago, Global Poetry Night

after-words bookstore

23 e Illinois street

Special Event Space at the back

5:30pm

 

We are co-hosting our first ever hybrid poetry reading event!

 

Live performers at the bookstore reading room will alternate with remote poets seen on a large screen using Zoom - 7 local Chicago poets and 8 poets from all over the world – Japan, Greece, Philippines, India, Mexico, Singapore and Canada - will be featured.  Each poet will perform a 5-6 minute set to keep the event to about 2 hours.

 

The event is free

 

The group we are hosting is the  PGN-Poetry Global Network, www.poetryglobalnetwork.com, an online resource that evolved during COVID, incorporated in the UK,  for all things poetry:  workshops, events, festivals and open mics.  This year they partnered with The Nottingham Poetry Festival and Poetry Festival Singapore in similar events, and the response was amazing.

 

Register now on Eventbrite: FREE

 

Meet the poets:

Joining us in the store: Beatriz Badikian-Gartler, Nina Corwin, Mike Puican, Mark Fishbein, Jocelyn Ajami, Marianne Boruch and Laurence Steven Minter.

Joining us from around the world: Lawin Bulatao (Philippines), Alexandra Psaropoulou (Greece), Frogg Corpse (USA), Takaki Umino (Japan), Edith Blackbird (Mexico), Unmesh Mohitkar (India), Chris Mooney-Singh (Singapore), and David Leo Sirois (Canada).

 

One Last Thing…

 

According to a Yale University study whose results were published earlier this year, adults over 50 who read books every day live 23 months longer than non-readers.

 

Happy Reading…