Blog
The East Side Freedom Library Blog is intended to provide community members with outlets for their ideas, and provide space to expand on and be in conversation with the voices who are speaking with and through the Freedom Library. We hope you will stay in conversation with us through our Book Geek Shelf Talker Blog and Research, Experiences + Review Blog, and/or share your own thoughts, experiences, research and ideas on here through the submission form below. We appreciate your thoughts and engagement with our communities!
- Research, Experiences + Review Blog
- Book Geek Shelf Talker Blog
- Submit a Blog or Book Geek Shelf Talker
On research, activities and reviews from the ESFL community
Solidarity Forever
Dear Sisters, Brother, and Kin,
We are unabashed in our mission—”to inspire solidarity, work for justice, and advocate for equity for all.” Our collections (now at 30,000 books, musical recordings, movies, and material objects) and our programs have been put together with this mission in mind. We are excited that the first half of September will feature several programs which place our quest to inspire solidarity at the center of our work.
In collaboration with art galleries, district councils, business organizations, and small businesses on Payne Avenue we are curating and hosting the “Solidarity Street Gallery 2022: Resilient Generations“, highlighting our Southeast Asian neighbors. In addition to hosting visual artists, ESFL will convene musical and poetry reading events on Friday, September 9, beginning at 5pm. This will also provide a preview of our collaboration with the American Composers Forum on the National Endowments for the Arts’ “Big Read” program. We will be convening a series of programs, beginning with the “Solidarity Street Gallery,” which will center on the new book, THE BEST WE CAN DO, by Thi Bui.
Our attention to solidarity will receive a specifically labor focus on Saturday, September 10, when, amidst the Solidarity Street Gallery celebration, we will convene our second annual “Labor Solidarity Picnic.” In addition to good food provided by the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189 and prepared by retired UFCW activists Mike Dreyer and Bernie Hesse, attendees will hear music by Charlie Maguire and will get updates on such key local labor issues as the Minnesota Nurses’ Association’s pending strike of hospitals across the state, the campaign by the Carpenters’ Union and immigrant labor organizations to put a stop to wage theft, and the ongoing campaigns by Starbucks and Amazon workers to unionize.
There will also be a special treat, a photography and oral history exhibit about Polish immigration to Minnesota in the 1980s, titled “Faces of Solidarity.” Curated by the Minnesota Polish Medical Society and featuring beautiful photographs taken by Grzegorz Litynski, this exhibit downstairs at ESFL will open to the public on Saturday, September 10, and will remain available for the remainder of September. On three weekends, ESFL will assemble panels from diverse immigrant communities who will discuss their own reasons for emigrating and the challenges they have faced in resettlement in Minnesota. We also hope to convene a conversation about the uses of photography and oral history as means to share stories and build empathy, leading to solidarity.
As you will see in this newsletter, ESFL is hosting other exciting programs in September. Please read the newsletter (or sign up here if you haven’t already!), visit our website, and explore our Facebook and Instagram pages. And join us to attend our events and, together, build solidarity.
Love and Solidarity,
Beth and Peter
The East Side Freedom Library would love to share your story about what it means to live during this pandemic. Please click 'Submit a Blog or Book Geek Shelf Talker' above to send your story.
The Sankofa Bird Flies at the East Side Freedom Library
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Book Geek Shelf Talker: Inland by Téa Obreht
By John Boyt
It’s generally comforting to me to have a President who read books. It’s also been rewarding as it turns out he has good taste. Over the years, I have been turning to books that Barack Obama has recommended. One such selection, Téa Obreht’s Inland (Random House, 2019), proved a challenging piece of fiction. The challenge is worth it and here are some tips for enjoying this book:
Keep a list of the characters. There are two story threads here and characters come and go. In the thread that features a family, there are a number of members some of whom are not actually members of the family. There are also plenty of absent characters in both threads and then there are a few ghosts as well. It’s not daunting if you have a post-it to keep track, especially as you get started.
Read it on a regular basis. This is not the kind of fiction that one can read once a week. I had to read a little four or five days a week to not lose touch with the world Obreht created.
Be comfortable with ambiguity. You are led to wonder who is talking and who is talking to whom and why this isn’t clearer.
Plow through it and be ready to let some things go.
I stopped about half way through and went back and started over.
At this point you might wonder why you’d ever want to read a book like Inland. Obreht’s writing is lovely and original. It feels like she is doing something new with fiction. She has sentences that are beautiful and funny. (Look for the moustache described as ambulatory.) While I didn’t enjoy having to start it over, it was worth it. My wife reminded me that I had had a similar problem with (Arundhati Roy’s) The God of Small Things. I would not say the book shares the stream of consciousness that book was noted for, but it does require the reader to let go of the need for plot points and embrace more frequent ambiguity. It requires a bit of trust in the author and Obreht – not unlike a previous President – is worth your trust.
John Boyt is an English teacher at Johnson High School on Saint Paul’s East Side.
Find Your Book!
Need to get your hands on a good book while doing your work to shelter in place? The library is closed in a response of solidarity amid the COVID-19 crisis, but here are some places where you can get your hands on all the great titles. Shop independent bookstores!
Black Garnet Books: https://www.blackgarnetbooks.com
Boneshaker Books: https://www.boneshakerbooks.com/
Dream Haven Books and Comics: http://dreamhavenbooks.com/
Eat My Words: http://www.eatmywordsbooks.com/
Irreverent Bookworm: https://irrevbooks.com/
Magers & Quinn: https://www.magersandquinn.com/
Mayday Books: http://maydaybookstore.org/
Moon Palace Books: https://www.moonpalacebooks.com/
Next Chapter Booksellers: https://www.nextchapterbooksellers.com/
SubText Books: https://subtextbooks.com/books
The Red Balloon Bookshop: https://www.redballoonbookshop.com/
Wild Rumpus: https://www.wildrumpusbooks.com/
Or you could even consider the amazing Powell's in Portland: https://www.powells.com/; Book Shop, https://bookshop.org/; AbeBooks https://www.abebooks.com/; or Indie Bound, https://www.indiebound.org/
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Please email your blogs or Book Geek Shelf Talkers to Clarence White at [email protected].
Book Geek Shelf Talkers: Provide two or three paragraphs about the book and why the thoughts inside are important for you. How might they be important for us, especially in these days when we need to inspire more solidarity than ever?