History Day Help at East Side Freedom Library
2025-02-22 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-03-01 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-03-08 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-03-15 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-03-22 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-03-29 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-04-05 10:00 - 12:00, 2025-04-12 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Chicago) and 2 more dates | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN HISTORY
The 2025 National History Day theme asks students to think about how rights have been won and exercised and how they connect to responsibilities as members of society. Are students interested in racial justice, labor activism, women’s rights, immigrant history, GLBTQ+ movements, environmental activism, and more? Send them to the East Side Freedom Library to find rich resources (books, art, music, and more) for their research and experienced mentors eager to help them shape their project. We have worked effectively with local students for the past ten years.
EVERY SATURDAY MORNING, 10AM TO NOON
BEGINNING NOVEMBER 16
We encourage students to make an appointment by emailing Peter Rachleff at peter@eastsidefreedomlibrary.org. Students should be prepared to follow our safety protocols, including wearing a mask if asked (as we are unsure what our precautions will be as we get deeper into the fall). After their initial mentoring consultation, they will be welcome to come at other times to use our resources, and our mentors will be available for one-on-one conversations, in person or remotely. If you would like to speak with us, feel free to call us at 651-207-4926. We look forward to working with you and your students.

August Nimtz: Marx, Douglass and the Fight for Racial Equality: a Panel with Kyle Edwards
2025-02-26 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
August Nimtz: Marx, Douglass and the Fight for Racial Equality: a Panel with Kyle Edwards
Wednesday, February 26, 2025, 7 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Sign up here for this free virtual event
Join the East Side Freedom Library with noted University of Minnesota scholar August Nimtz and his coauthor Kyle Edwards as we explore the present-day themes illuminated in their book The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution: Comparing Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass in Real-Time.
What sort of politics leads to real emancipation? This question led Nimtz and Edwards back to the Civil War and Reconstruction. Their work engages a conversation with two competing political perspectives, liberalism and Marxism, examining the biggest breakthrough for the millennial-old democratic quest after the French Revolution occurred – the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States. But it does so with a purpose for today. As CLR James said, “You can study history and understand where we are today and why and where we are going tomorrow.”
August H. Nimtz, Ph.D., is a nationally renowned professor of political science and African American and African studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. He specializes in Marxism, political economy, politics of race, class & ethnicity, and African politics.
Kyle A. Edwards is a Curriculum Associate at the University of Minnesota. He is a member of AFSCME 3800 and author of “Those Deluded, Ill-Starred Men: Frederick Douglass, the New National Era, and the Paris Commune.”
They will be joined by Jack McKivigan and Sidney Carlson White.
Jack McKivigan received his Ph.D. in History from the Ohio State University. He began work at the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University under its founding editor John W. Blassingame in 1979 and took over as the project’s director in 1994. Under his direction the project has published seven volumes with Yale University Press and has only three more to go to finish the most complete scholarly edition of an African American in history. McKivigan is also the author of important books and articles on various elements of radical history including abolitionism, civil rights, and labor history.
Sidney Carlson White is a member of Marxist Unity Group, a caucus of Democratic Socialists of America. He is on the Organizing Committee of the Central Brooklyn Branch of the New York City DSA. He has worked on mayoral and state legislative campaigns in New York, fighting for candidates who will be accountable to the socialist movement that supports them. Outside of his organizing work, his scholarship is in the areas of twentieth and twenty-first century American culture and its intersections with race and empire.
THIS VIRTUAL EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY! SIGN UP FOR YOUR LINK HERE!

Chavonn Williams Shen: Readings and Conversations!
2025-02-27 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Chavonn Williams Shen: Readings and Conversations!
with Carolyn Holbrook and Gen Del Raye
East Side Freedom Library
1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Thursday, February 27, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
Join the East Side Freedom Library for a reading from Chavonn Williams Shen and her guests Carolyn Holbrook and Gen Del Raye.
Chavonn’s first collection of poetry, Still Life with Rope and River explores racism through a chorus of voices surrounding Emmett Till’s murder. Through research in combination with emotional truth, Williams Shen uses persona poems to dive deep into the psyche of both common and lesser known people and objects regarding Till’s lynching. Williams Shen also weaves in their own narrative and family history of how Blackness is dissected and dismissed, illustrating how the past is a ghost to the present.
Chavonn Williams Shen (she/they) is from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was a 2022 McKnight Writing fellow and a first runner-up for The Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Contest. She was also a Best of the Net Award finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a winner of the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series, a fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, and an instructor for the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. A Bread Loaf, Tin House, VONA, and Hurston/Wright workshop alum, her writing has appeared in: Diode, Anomaly, AGNI, and others. Her debut book, Still Life with Rope and River, is published by Finishing Line Press.
Carolyn Holbrook is founder and Artistic/Executive Director of More Than a Single Story. Her memoir, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify, won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. She is co-editor with David Mura of the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (Minn 2021), and is co-author with Arleta Little of civil rights icon, Dr. Josie R. Johnson’s memoir, Hope In the Struggle (Minn 2019) and Ordinary People, Extraordinary Journeys: How the St. Paul Companies Leadership Initiatives in Neighborhoods Program Changed Lives and Communities (2015). Her essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (MNHS 2015) and A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota (MNHS 2016). Her TEDx talk, “The Life you Live is the Legacy You will Leave” was presented at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN (2022).
Gen Del Raye is half Japanese and was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. His writing has appeared in the Gettysburg Review and Poetry Northwest, among others, and has been anthologized in The Best Small Fictions 2017 and Best New Poets 2019. His debut collection of short stories, Boundless Deep, and Other Stories, won the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction and is available from the University of Nebraska Press.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!

Pulitzer Prize finalist Mai Der Vang with Chaun Webster
2025-03-06 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Pulitzer Prize finalist Mai Der Vang in conversation with Chaun Webster about Primordial
Thursday, March 6, 2024, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN
books for sale from SubText Bookstore
Registration is encouraged
Pulitzer Prize finalist Mai Der Vang will be joined by poet and scholar Chaun Webster for a reading and conversation of her new collection of poetry, Primordial. In this new collection, Vang addresses the plight of the saola, an extremely rare and critically endangered animal native to the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam, as a vehicle to investigate the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities, the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam, the lives of refugees afterward, and the postmemory carried by their descendants.
Vang’s work is lyrically insistent and visually compelling as she examines the saola’s relationship to Hmong refugee identity and cosmology and a shared sense of exile, precarity, privacy, and survival. Can a war-torn landscape and memory provide sanctuary, and what are the consequences for our climate, our origins, our ability to belong to a homeland? Written during a difficult pregnancy and postpartum period, Vang’s poems are urgent stays against extinction.
She will be in conversation with Chaun Webster.
Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain, a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and Afterland, winner of the First Book Award of the Academy of American Poets. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, her poetry has appeared in Tin House, the American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.

Chaun Webster is a poet and graphic designer living in Minneapolis whose work is attempting to put pressure on the spatial and temporal limitations of writing, of the English language, as a way to demonstrate its incapacity for describing blackness outside of a regime of death and dying. Webster’s books include, Gentry!fication: or the scene of the crime published by Noemi Press in 2018, and Wail Song: wading in the water at the end of the world, published by Black Ocean in 2023. Both books were awarded the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry.

This event is free and open for the cause of solidarity.

ESEJ Community Party: A Connection and Mutual Aid Event!
2025-03-08 13:00 - 15:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
ESEJ Community Party: A Connection and Mutual Aid Event!
Saturday, March 8, 2025, 1:00-3:30 pm
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Join East Side neighbors and concerned community members from across the region for this environmental justice mutual aid action!
The East Side of Saint Paul has long been an area of mixed use with industry abutting neighborhoods. Now we know the impact of heavy industry on the air, water and soil on the people who live in the vicinity. The East Side Environmental Justice group (ESEJ) was started by East Side neighbors to collectively address problems such as lack of trees, heat island, air pollution. A big focus has been the Northern Iron Foundry and its resistance to complying with the MPCA (Minnesota Pollution Control) to regulate emissions. Northern Iron has taken the MPCA to court to avoid taking responsibility in our neighborhood! ESEJ has been connecting with our neighbors to assess impact and bring support.
Opportunities include:

DIY air filter construction to take home to improve you indoor air quality
Mobile Food shelf distribution by Mom’s Food Shelf
Box lunch provided
Free Blood lead testing from ESNDC
Learn how to submit a complaint to the MPCA
Engage in community artwork
Build connections, friendships and knowledge

This event is enthusiastically supported by our East Side Community Councils
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE

Ben Barson and Brassroots Democracy: A Panel Discussion on Music and the Movements
2025-03-14 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Ben Barson and Brassroots Democracy: A Panel Discussion on Music and the Movements
Friday, March 14, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
FREE!
Join Ben Barson in conversation with Davu Seru, Yolanda Williams, Shekela Wanyama and Brass Solidarity for a conversation about music, culture and movements. Much like how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction, the tuneful art has been woven into grassroots social movements throughout the twentieth century, with implications for American culture writ large.
Benjamin Barson is a composer, historian, and musicologist. He is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His research thinks through jazz as an Afro-Atlantic art form deeply tied to the counter-plantation legacies of the Haitian Revolution and their echoes in Radical Reconstruction. He received his PhD in Music from the University of Pittsburgh and recently completed a Fulbright Garcia-Robles postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Mexicali, Mexico.
His work Mirror Butterfly: The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite (2018) was hailed as “Fully orchestrated and magnificently realized” (The Vermont Standard) as well as “a call to action” (I Care if You Listen). His teaching encourages students to consider musical aesthetics and their associated production practices through a holistic, interdisciplinary approach rooted in methodologies developed by scholars in Africana studies, musicology, cultural studies, and Atlantic History from below.
Davu Seru is the Curator of the Givens Collection of African American Literature at University of Minnesota. He is an improvising musician, composer and scholar known primarily for his work on drums. For the past 20+ years he has worked with musicians such as Milo Fine, George Cartwright, Nirmala Rajasekar, Douglas R. Ewart, Michelle Kinney, Dean Magraw, Paul Metzger, Evan Parker, Didier Petit, Babatunde Lea, Nathan Hanson, Mankwe Ndosi, Rafael Toral, David Boykin, Donald Washington, Guillame Seguron, Tony Hymas, David Boykin, Chris Bates, Catherine Delaunay, and Nicole Mitchell Gantt. Davu is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
Rev. Yolanda Y. Williams, Ph.D., is a performer, educator, scholar, and pastor. Yolanda performed soprano and mezzo-soprano repertoire with Vocalessence, the Rochester Symphony, La Choeur Symphonique de Fribourg, Lundi Sept Heures, Ensemble de Cuivres Jurassien, the Montreux Symphony, and the Israel Philharmonic. Her worldwide performances have been of music from the Classical, Jazz, Blues, and Gospel genres. Dr. Williams teaches music as a cultural artifact through the African American/African Studies department at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Shekela Wanyama (she/her/hers) builds community through crafting innovative and meaningful choral experiences. She is passionate about building a 21st century practice of art music that is inclusive, engaging, honest, and brave. A freelance conductor-educator based in Minneapolis, Dr. Wanyama serves on the faculty of the University of Minnesota, Hamline University, and the music staff at Unity Church-Unitarian. Dr. Wanyama holds a DMA in conducting from the University of Minnesota, an MM in choral conducting from Temple University, a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Minnesota, and is a proud graduate of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

This event is generously sponsored by the African American and African Studies Department at the University of Minnesota.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!

Histories on the Run: State Memory & Hmong Refugee Ways of Knowing
2025-03-28 18:30 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Histories on the Run: State Memory & Hmong Refugee Ways of Knowing
A Conversation with Ma Vang & Kong Pha
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Friday, March 28, 2025, 7:00 p.m.; doors, social and refreshments at 6:30
What does refugee history look like when government records try to keep state complicity in producing displacement a secret? How might Critical Hmong Studies help us to understand the forces of empire, war, place, and peoplehood more deeply? How are archives embodied and lived?
Join Professors Ma Vang (UC Merced, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies) and Kong Pha (UW-Madison, Gender, Women, Sexuality Studies and Asian American Studies) for a community discussion on Vang’s History on the Run: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies (Duke, 2021) and Pha’s forthcoming Hyperheterosexual Subjects: Racialized Cultures of Gender and Sexuality in Hmong America (University of Washington Press, 2025).
Dr. Ma Vang is an Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. Her most recent book is History on the Run: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies (Duke University Press, 2021). She is co-author of Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies (UC Press, 2022) and co-editor of Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). She teaches courses in critical race theory, critical refugee and immigration studies, and interdisciplinary humanities. She is actively involved in Merced community organizations in an advisory role on youth and education projects.

Dr. Kong Pheng Pha is Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He teaches courses on Hmong American experiences in the diaspora, Asian American feminism, and social justice organizing in the U.S. His book Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial Subjectivity and the Myth of Hyperheterosexuality (University of Washington Press, 2025) examines Hmong racial subject formation and cultural transformations against the backdrop of U.S. sexual and queer liberalism. Additionally, his creative public humanities and community-based participatory research projects have been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.

This event is free and open to the public. Complimentary snacks & refreshments will be available beforehand at 6:30.
Sponsored by Sociology and American Studies, Macalester College

Save Our Post Office!
2025-03-29 13:00 - 15:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
SAVE OUR POST OFFICE! 💪 💌

Join us for a panel with postal workers’ union leaders and their insights into how we can work together to save our post office.

⏲️ WHEN: Saturday, March 29, 1 – 3 PM

WHERE:

📍 In-person: East Side Freedom Library at 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55016
(Register here to let us know you’re coming and/or get the link to the recording of this event!)

👋 WHO: Joe Rian, President of National Association of Letters Carriers Local 9 (Minneapolis); Jeff Larson, President of National Postal Mailhandlers Local 323 (Twin Cities); American Postal Workers’ Union’s Greg Tegland (President of the Minneapolis local); Dave Cook (President of the St. Paul local); Kim Maurer (President of the Postal Data Center local); Richard Haefner, President, Minnesota State APWU; and Tom Sharpe, President, Minnesota Rural Letter Carriers Association..

💡 WHY: The administration’s desire to seize control of the United States Postal Service and privatize it is a threat not only to postal workers, but to all of us.

From big cities to rural communities, we depend on the security and reliability of the postal service to handle our financial and personal communications. Our postal worker unions are standing in the gap to preserve the post office–not only protecting their jobs but also protecting the service we all value.

The unions are setting an example for public employees, from the federal government to the state, country, and city levels, as they face the threats of the oligarchs and their political minions! Stand with us!
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY! (Registration here.)

Trilingua Cinema Presents: Soundtrack to a Coup-d'Etat
2025-04-10 19:00 - 21:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Soundtrack to a Coup-d’Etat
Thursday, April 10th, 7:00pm
East Side Freedom Library
1105 Greenbrier St, St Paul, MN 55106
“A movie that should be watched by everyone, whether to understand art or the backbone of our political and economic system.“
-Elisa Guimarães, Collider
Join us for a FREE SCREENING of Johan Grimonprez’s masterful documentary Soundtrack to a Coup-d’Etat.
Synopsis
United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. Richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, official government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story of precedent that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate.
This film is not yet rated. Parents are encouraged to use their own discretion.
This film will be screened in English with English subtitles.
REGISTRATION REQUESTED
Trailer:

MN Book Award Series: Christopher Lehman's "It Took Courage: Eliza Winston's Quest For Freedom"
2025-04-23 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Christopher Lehman’s “It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest For Freedom”
Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
LET US KNOW YOU’RE COMING
Join the East Side Freedom Library the day after the awards ceremony in welcoming Minnesota Book Award finalist Christopher Lehman as he returns to ESFL for his award-nominated book It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest for Freedom.
In 1860, Eliza Winston escaped enslavement while traveling in Minnesota, where she secured her freedom through legal appeal. Her story adds powerful testimony to African American experiences and perseverance in antebellum America.
Winston petitioned for her freedom before a judge in Minnesota—and she won. After she left the state for Canada, the abolitionists who had helped her told and retold the story, emphasizing their own actions; their detractors claimed they had used Winston as a pawn. For more than 150 years, historians’ accounts have emphasized the mobs who battled in the streets after the ruling, focusing on the implications of the events for Minnesota politics rather than Winston’s own story. With It Took Courage, Christopher P. Lehman helps set the record straight.
Christopher P. Lehman is a professor of ethnic studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He researches, writes, and teaches about the struggle for African American equality, using the tools of genealogy to trace the lives of people who have left very few traces. He has written six other books, including Slavery’s Reach: Southern Slaveholders in the North Star State, which won the Minnesota Book Award for Minnesota Nonfiction in 2020.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!
(REGISTER HERE)
Books for sale from

Z PUPPETS ROSENSCHNOZ PRESENTS: Tales of ᏓᎦᏏ Dagsi Turtle & ᏥᏍᏚ Jisdu Wabbit
2025-04-26 10:30 - 12:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Z PUPPETS ROSENSCHNOZ PRESENTS
Tales of ᏓᎦᏏ Dagsi Turtle & ᏥᏍᏚ Jisdu Wabbit
A new musical adventure to help keep alive the Cherokee language
Saturday, April 26, 10:30 a.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, St. Paul
Free admission!
Dagsi Turtle & his sidekick Jisdu Wabbit race through time and space to bring you a new musical adventure into the Cherokee language. Hop aboard the Turtleship and join Dagsi and Jisdu’s quest to keep alive this endangered Indigenous language. This show features catchy original tunes and out-of-this-world puppet characters, created and performed by Cherokee Nation citizen Chris Griffith and Shari Aronson and directed by Julie Boada (Anishinabe).
Recommended for ages 5+.
Tales is an Awardee of a 2025 Jim Henson Foundation Family Theater Grant, with support also from the Minnesota State Arts Board and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.
In 2019, the Cherokee Nation declared a state of emergency for their language. In response, Z Puppets is creating live performances, music videos and web series to engage youth and adults in seeing and hearing Cherokee language, culture and history. This work has earned critical acclaim, media attention (Indian Country Today, Cherokee Phoenix and MN Public Radio) and thousands of viewers for their creative approach to revitalizing an endangered language.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Chris Griffith (Writer/Composer/Puppetry Designer/Performer), is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Co-Creative Director of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz and award-winning puppetry artist/arts educator in Minneapolis. Over 30 years, his work has attracted support from Indigenous Performances Productions, Cherokee Film Office/OK Film & TV Academy, NDN Collective, FilmNorth, Tiwahe Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, Perpich Center for Arts Education, Ivey Awards and the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Shari Aronson (Writer/Performer). Co-Creative Director of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz, started her career as a Resident Playwright at Bloomington Playwrights’ Project in Indiana, followed by a McKnight Foundation Screenwriting Fellowship and M.A. in Drama Education. Theaters nationwide produce Shari’s stage adaptation of children’s book Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. She has also developed interactive environments and experiences for Minnesota’s History Center, Science Museum and Children”s Museum.

Director Julie Boada is an Anishinabe artist, storyteller, puppeteer and arts educator. Julie has worked regionally and nationally with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre, Z Puppets Rosenschnoz, and the MN History Center. A 2014 Ivey Award recipient, Julie has received support from the MN State Arts Board and the Jerome Foundation. Julie has a B.A. in Studio Arts and American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota.
About Z Puppets Rosenschnoz
Z Puppets’ mission is to bring people of all ages and abilities into the power of playfulness, through performances, workshops and feats of imagination. Our work delights children and their adults with the inventive blend of hand-crafted puppetry, quirky humor and whimsical music. Since 1998, we have created 30+ original shows — from a glow-in-the-dark performance of cell division to a mindfulness musical. Z Puppets has earned honors and support nationally from the Jim Henson Foundation, Network of Ensemble Theaters, Puppeteers of America, Parents’ Choice and Creative Child Magazine and Ordway Center for Performing Arts. Z Puppets performs across the country (including National Puppetry Festivals, Heard Museum of American Indian Art and Eric Carle Museum), as well as in Minnesota (at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts, Walker Art Center and Minnesota State Fair).
Shari and Chris consider it a great honor to lead people into sharing laughter and making meaning of the world. Thus, their company motto: Behold! The Power of Playfulness.
Learn more at zpuppets.org.

MN Book Award Series: Sonja Trom Eayrs: Dodge County Inc.
2025-04-26 14:00 - 16:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
MN Book Award Series: Sonja Trom Eayrs: Dodge County Inc.
Saturday, April 26, 2025, 3:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Note: There will be a reception at 2:00 featuring the art exhibit You Betcha! Farmer-Labor Solidarity is Possible. Join us!
Let us know you’re coming! REGISTER HERE.
Join the East Side Freedom Library and the Land Stewardship Project in welcoming Minnesota Book Award finalist Sonja Trom Eayrs for her award-nominated book Dodge County Inc.: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America.
In 2014 Sonja Trom Eayrs’s parents filed the first of three lawsuits against Dodge County officials and their neighbors, one of the few avenues available to them to challenge installation of a corporate factory farm near their intergenerational family farm in Dodge County, Minnesota. For years they’d witnessed the now widely known devastation wrought by industrial hog operations—inhumane treatment of animals and people, pollution, the threat of cancer clusters, and more. They’d had enough. They also deeply understood an effect of Big Ag rarely discussed in mainstream media—the hollowing-out of their lifelong farming community and economy in service of the corporate bottom line.
Sonja Trom Eayrs is a farmer’s daughter, rural advocate, and attorney. She is involved in several rural advocacy organizations, including the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, Farm Action, Land Stewardship Project, and Dodge County Concerned Citizens. Trom Eayrs also serves as the business manager for the Trom family farm in Dodge County, Minnesota. For more information about the author, visit sonjatromeayrs.com.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY! Registration is requested.

Book Award Series: Marcie Rendon's "Where They Last Saw Her"
2025-04-28 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Book Award Series: Marcie Rendon’s Where They Last Saw Her
Monday, April 28, 2025, 7 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE (REGISTRATION REQUESTED)
Join us for another in our series of Minnesota Book Award finalists readings when Marcie Rendon comes to ESFL for her nominated book Where They Last Saw Her.
As a follow up to her award-winning Cash Blackbear series comes a compelling novel of a Native American woman who learns of the disappearance of one of her own and decides enough is enough.
All they heard was her scream. Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. As Quill puts everything on the line to make a difference, the novel asks searing questions about bystander culture, the reverberations of even one act of crime, and the long-lasting trauma of being considered invisible.
Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, author, playwright, poet, and freelance writer. Also a community arts activist, Rendon supports other native artists / writers / creators to pursue their art, and is a speaker for colleges and community groups on Native issues, leadership, writing. She is an award-winning author of a fresh new murder mystery series, and also has an extensive body of fiction and nonfiction works.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY
REGISTER HERE
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Book Awards Series: Shannon Gibney and Sun Yung Shin
2025-04-30 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
Book Awards Series: Shannon Gibney and Sun Yung Shin
Wednesday, April 30, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, Saint Paul, MN 55106
THIS EVENT IS FREE; REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED
Join the East Side Freedom Library as we welcome Shannon Gibney, co-editor and contributor, and Sun Yung Shin, contributing author for When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology. This Minnesota Book Award Finalist selection is an emotion-filled collection that features 17 authors whose stories tell us important lessons about culture beyond a message to adoptees.
There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.
These tales from fourteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.
This groundbreaking collection centers what it’s like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives.
Shannon Gibney is an award-winning author of books of all kinds — from novels to anthologies to essays to picture books. She writes for adults, children, and everyone in-between. Her books include, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be (Dutton, 2023), Dream Country (Dutton, 2018), and the children’s book Sam and the INCREDIBLE African and African American Food Fight (University of Minnesota Press, 2023).

신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea and was raised in the Chicago area. She is the winner of many awards for her poetry collections and is an editor, writer, and cultural worker. She is the editor of What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories on Food and Family (2021) and of A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, author of several poetry collections, the latest decorated work The Wet Hex is the winner of the Midland Authors Society Award for Poetry and finalist for a Minnesota Book Award). Her forthcoming picture book, Revolutions are Made of Love: Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs, co-written with Mélina Mangal, will be published in 2025.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!
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MN Book Award Series: "Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces" with Michelle Filkins
2025-05-15 19:00 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
MN Book Award Series: Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces with Michelle Filkins, joined by Sha Cage, Maureen Aiken, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Suzanne Nielsen and Patricia Cumbie.
Thursday, May 15, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED
The East Side Freedom Library is fortunate to have on our board of directors editor, librarian and writer Michelle Filkins. Join us for a conversation on the collection recognized as a Minnesota Book Award finalist, Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces. Michelle will be on hand along with some of the contributors to the collection.
Locker Room Talk, gives us insight into the epic and ordinary moments that happen when women are together. Subverting the traditional idea of “locker room talk,” this collection illuminates the conversations women share with family, friends, and strangers, whether at the sinks of a nightclub ladies’ room, on a bus heading to the Women’s March, or in the kitchen of an elder relative. Cumulatively, they reveal the myriad ways women care for themselves, each other, their communities, and our world.
Michelle Filkins is a founding editor of Spout Press and a contributing author to The Evolution of Human Cooperation and Community Development (Lexington Books, 2021) and Creating a Transformational Community: The Fundamentals of Stewardship Activities (Lexington Books, 2017). She is a Little Free Library steward and one of the Daunte Wright Memorial caretakers. Currently she is a professor and reference and instruction librarian at Metro State University in Saint Paul.
Sha Cage is a renaissance artist who writes, directs and acts in theater and film. She has been called a change-maker and one of the leading artists of her generation. Sha is one of the premier actors, artists and culture makers in the Twin Cities whose work has been recognized globally.
Maureen Aitken’s short-story collection, The Patron Saint of Lost Girls (SEMO Press), won the Nilsen Prize, the top Foreword Review INDIE Prize (General Fiction, Gold Winner), and ranked in the Kirkus Best Indie Books of 2019. She is a Minnesota Book Award finalist and a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Leslie Adrienne Miller’s collections of poetry include Y, The Resurrection Trade, and Eat Quite Everything You See from Graywolf Press, and Yesterday Had a Man In It, Ungodliness and Staying Up For Love from Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Patricia Cumbie’s short stories and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Her writing has been supported by The Loft Literary Center’s Fiction Mentor Series, a nSASE/Jerome Fellowship, a Loft Career Initiative Grant, and a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship.
Suzanne Nielsen (she/her) is a lifelong resident of St. Paul, Minnesota. She is an East Sider who teaches writing at Metropolitan State University. Her latest poetry collection, Face Up, was published in March 2022.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!
REGISTRATION REQUESTED
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MN Book Award Series: Under Turbulent Skies - a reading and reflection by Kao Kalia Yang
2025-05-22 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
MN Book Award Series: Under Turbulent Skies – a reading and reflection by Kao Kalia Yang
Thursday, May 22, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED
On April 22nd of this year, Kao Kalia Yang accomplished something no other person has in the history of the Minnesota Book Awards. She took home three top honors in one year! We are stunned but not surprised. We have long been honored to have her as a friend and frequent presenter at the East Side Freedom Library and again welcome her as we celebrate. This recognition is apt for the rich voice and astute consciousness she has shared over the years, geographies and important dialogs.
Kalia won the prize for:

Children’s Literature: The Rock in My Throat by Kao Kalia Yang; illustrated by Jiemei Lin (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing Group)
Middle Grade Literature: The Diamond Explorer by Kao Kalia Yang (Dutton Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House)
Memoir & Creative Nonfiction: Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life by Kao Kalia Yang (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster)

In addition, Kalia is part of this year’s Book Awards winner in the Anthology category, a book co-edited by ESLF board member Michelle Filkins, Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces.
Where the Rivers Part
“There are moments of poignant beauty. There are also humiliations. Tswb is small and brown; her English is not good. In America, she is easily overlooked. In this exceptional book, Yang shows what a mistake it is to underestimate her: ‘I wanted to claim the legacy of the woman I come from, the women who had to define for themselves what it meant to live in a world where luck was not on your side.’ She has done so with deep feeling and grace.” —BookPage (starred review)
The Diamond Explorer
Award winning author Kao Kalia Yang stuns with middle-grade debut about a Hmong American boy’s struggle to find a place
for himself in America and in the world of his ancestors.
“Yang has crafted a layered, profoundly moving musing on grief, connection (and lack thereof), and identity…a true gem.” –Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW; “[A] richly wrought tale about a boy coming into his own.” –Publishers Weekly
The Rock in My Throat
Having seen the poor treatment her parents received when making their best efforts at speaking English, she no longer speaks at school. Kalia feels as though a rock has become lodged in her throat, and it grows heavier each day. Although the narrative is somber, it is also infused with moments of beauty, love, and hope.–Lerner Publishing
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer. She is the author of the adult memoirs The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang is also the author of the children’s books A Map Into the World, The Shared Room, The Most Beautiful Thing, and Yang Warriors. Yang is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, and her work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, and garnered seven Minnesota Book Awards. The East Side Freedom Library is housed in the building of her childhood public library. Kao Kalia Yang lives in Minnesota with her family, and teaches and speaks across the nation.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!
REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED

MN Book Award Series: Novel & Short Story Winner Mubanga Kalimamukwento
2025-06-05 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
MN Book Award Series: Fiction Winner Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Thursday, June 5, 2025, 7 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED
Join the East Side Freedom Library as we welcome the 2025 winner of the Minnesota Book Award in the Novel & Short Story category, Mubanga Kalimamukwento. Acclaimed by many critics for her the brilliant poetics of her astonishing prose, Mubanga has spun her words into a litany of awards and recognition. She will be at ESFL on June 5 to read from her Minnesota top honors work Obligations to the Wounded and other works.
Mubanga Kalimamukwento was born in Lusaka, Zambia. Her creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in adda, Aster(ix), Contemporary Verse 2, Kweli, Overland, The Ex-Puritan, Menelique, on Netflix, and elsewhere, and her editorial work can be found or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, the Water~Stone Review, Doek! Literary Magazine and Safundi. She founded Ubwali Literary Magazine and co-founded the Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop. When she’s not writing or editing, Mubanga serves as a Mentor at the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She is a PhD student in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota (Twin-Cities), where she is also an Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) Scholar. Mubanga lives in Minnesota with her husband and their two children.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY!
REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED

9th Annual Union Job & Resource Fair
2025-06-12 13:00 - 18:00 | The Electrical Industry Building, 1330 Conway Street, Saint Paul, MN, 55106, United States
Join us for our 9th Annual Union Job and Resource Fair, held at the Electrical Industry Building, 1330 Conway Street, Thursday, June 12 from 1:00 to 6:00 PM on Saint Paul’s East Side.
Our goal is to connect individuals in our community with potential employers and local resources to create pathways towards a union career. We will have onsite interviewing, hiring, assistance with resume writing, apprenticeship program information, community resources – including expungement services.
Our unions, training programs and employers have career opportunities throughout the entire metro area! Whether you are just starting out, looking for your first job or a seasoned worker looking to land into a new career with thriving pay and benefits, we have opportunities for all.

Participating Employers & Organizations:

Anchor Glass Container Corporation
Boilermakers Local #647
City of Saint Paul Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO)
City of Saint Paul Public Works
Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest
IATSE Local 13
IBEW Local Union 23
IBEW Local Union 110
Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis
Labor Education Service, UMN
Laborers Local 563 LiUNA
Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development / CareerForce
Minnesota Department of Transportation
Minnesota RETAIN
Minnesota Training Partnership
Monarch Healthcare Management
North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters (NCSRCC)
Ramsey/Washington Recycling & Energy
Roofers & Waterproofers Union Local 96
Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services
St Paul Pipefitters JATC
St. Paul Plumbers 34
United State Postal Service
Wright Tree Service

Sponsored by:

AFL-CIO Community Services
City of Saint Paul
East Side Freedom Library
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers IBEW Local 110
Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation
St. Paul Building Trades
St. Paul Federal Credit Union
UFCW Local 1189

ART LAB FINAL SHOWCASE: MAPPING OUR HOUSING FAMILY TREES
2025-06-22 13:00 - 14:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
ART LAB FINAL SHOWCASE: MAPPING OUR HOUSING FAMILY TREES
Sunday, June 22, 1 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
Paint. Draw. Type. Map. Sing. Act. Glam. Listen. Share.
Join us for an interactive, community empowered art lab showcase. The East Side Freedom Library Art Lab artists will bring their installations showcasing their work and inviting everyone in the community, your community, to join in artmaking, storytelling, story mapping and more.

Artists Sophie Wang, Sterling Miller, Marcia Rowe and Lis Sundberg will engage you in art, stories and history. Paint, print, draw, type, zine, and write with our story map of Saint Paul and beyond!

Sophie Wang: My primary artistic practice is the creation of comic zines that take a critical power-informed lens to dominant science and technology. I began making these comics when I co-founded an activist collective at the intersection of science and social justice called Free Radicals and wanted to use my ability to draw in service of the work. I came to this work originally out of a deep sense of responsibility to make conversations critiquing the imperialist, objectivist, universalist nature of dominant western science more accessible, and to engage more people in envisioning what more liberatory forms of science, knowledge-making, and epistemology have, do, and could look like.
Sterling Miller: Social Justice is informing my art by pressuring me create work that speaks to the needs of Black folks. I, like many others, know that to identify as Black is grounds for political warfare. I know that highlighting Black revolutionaries in performance art acts as a catalyst to inspire Artists and Audiences alike. When we get to see the Assata Shakur’s story on stage we are enthralled by her iconic nature and her ability to achieve the unthinkable. In works that took place after this I have always tried to center Black/African-American narratives and cultural practices.
Lis Sundberg: I have been interested in the intersections between art and social justice for a long time because art is a powerful and accessible way to engage people in social justice. Art extends topics of social justice to a wider audience and allows representation through a range of mediums. I am interested in participatory art because it creates opportunities for people to have a meaningful experience while contributing their stories to the piece. The art I create is informed by my history of participation in social justice movements.
Marcia Rowe: Social justice informs my art through my lived, academic, and professional experiences. It creates innovation, niche experiences, cultural knowledge, and growth of connection between myself and a diverse audience. My academic background centers intersecting visual arts with sociology practices, visual and qualitative research, design studies, and community engagement experiences.
THIS EVENT IS FREE AND VERY OPEN TO EVERYONE!

BOOK RELEASE! Said Shaiye for ARE YOU BORG NOW? with Douglas Kearney
2025-06-30 19:00 - 20:30 | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
BOOK RELEASE! Said Shaiye for ARE YOU BORG NOW? in conversation with Douglas Kearney
Monday, June 30, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN 55106
REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED
Join us at the East Side Freedom Library for a book release reading and conversation with noted author Said Shaiye and award-winning poet Douglas Kearney.
Are You Borg Now? by Said Shaiye (NOEMI Press) is an Afrofuturist memoir returns in a second edition with a new introduction by Douglas Kearney. Said Shaiye’s cross-genre work blends nonfiction and poetry in an experimental interview the author conducts with his younger self, rejecting the conventions of memoir and what
is expected of who writes them, specifically when that writer is an immigrant. Are You Borg Now? ciphers with trauma through a poetics of refusal via hard and beautiful language. Finding vigor in Islam and mirrors in Star Trek: Voyager, Shaiye shifts achingly between memory and improvisation.
Said Shaiye is an Autistic + ADHD Somali Writer, Photographer & Filmmaker. He was a 2024 MacDowell Fellow & won a Minnesota State Arts Grant to lead a BIPOC Neurodivergent Writing Workshop. He was nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Prize by Indiana Review for his essay “Sneak a Uzi on the Island in my Army Jacket lining.” His first edition of Are You Borg Now?, was a 2022 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir.
He has published poetry & prose in Indiana Review, Texas Review, Obsidian, Brittle Paper, Pithead Chapel, 580 Split, and elsewhere.
He is a writing professor in Minneapolis.
“Why should one write? This is the question that pervades Said Shaiye’s experimental approach to memoir in Are You Borg Now? This book offers many different kinds of answers to such a question, answers that involve facing the effects of trauma and violence with courage, honesty, and a willingness to risk vulnerability. One reason to write is to call forth a voice in solidarity with others who suffer. Shaiye is a writer who transforms the pain of alienation into beautifully lyric writing and from that writing springs a profound faith that one is never really alone.” -Kathryn Nuernberger, author of The Witch of Eye

Douglas Kearney has published nine books ranging from poetry to essays. In 2023, Optic Subwoof, a collection of his Bagley Wright lectures, won the Poetry Foundation’s Pegasus Prize for Poetry Criticism and the CLMP Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. His seventh, Sho, (Wave Books) is a Griffin Poetry Prize and Minnesota Book Award winner and a National Book Award, Pen America, and Kingsley Tufts Award finalist. Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities where he is a McKnight Presidential Fellow.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE FOR THE CAUSE OF SOLIDARITY

Movie Night Out! TriLingua Presents "Despicable Me 4"
2025-08-05 20:30 - 22:00 | MN
Movie Night Out! TriLingua Presents “Despicable Me 4”
Tuesday, August 5, 2025, 8:30 p.m.
1105 Greenbrier Street Paul, MN 55106
After all the Night Out celebrations, join TriLingua Cinema and the rest of the East Side Freedom Library crew for a FREE OUTDOOR SCREENING of Despicable Me 4 on the ESFL lawn!
We’ll be grilling up some popcorn and popping hot dogs on the ESFL lawn!
Synopsis
The fourth outing for the popular Despicable franchise sees Gru, Lucy, and their girls facing off against Maxime Le Mal, Gru’s old high school classmate who now possesses the power of a half human, half cockroach supervillain.
This film is rated PG and runs for 134 minutes. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to consult Common Sense Media for more information.
This film will be screened in English with English subtitles.
Trailer
