Newsoverworld

This week, we have filmmaker Garrett Bradley discussing her new documentary Time, which follows a larger-than-life matriarch, fighting for the release of her incarcerated husband. Bradley discusses the idea of time in her film — time served, the slowness of justice and the accumulation of grief and joy. Later in the episode, we have one of the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls, alias Kathe Kollwitz, on to discuss the legendary Guerrilla Girl movement, misogyny and racism in the arts, the battles ahead and the battles won. The post Women Against the Odds: Talking to Filmmaker Garrett Bradley & Art Legends, the Guerrilla Girls appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/3mJ01qQ via IFTTT

This October, in the lead-up to the next presidential election, LARB ran a number of reviews, essays, and interviews that tackled some of the most pressing political issues of the day. Taken together, these pieces serve as a reminder that all politics is both local and global — that what happens in one’s backyard always intersects, in one way or another, with what happens on the world stage. Below you will find pieces on US foreign and domestic policy, local histories of redlined neighborhoods and sanctuary cities, informed reviews of politically charged films, and considerations of new approaches to climate change and monetary policy. Each piece, in its own way, is a call to look deeper and to stay engaged. — LARB Editorial The post The Monthly Digest: November 2020 appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/369G3PB via IFTTT

The post 55 Voices for Democracy appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/3i2mtIL via IFTTT

This week, Medaya speaks with acclaimed filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda about his new film, The Truth (La Vérité), starring French film screen legends Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. Kore-eda discusses complicated family dynamics, the relationship between art and truth-telling and what brought him to France. In our second interview, Kate and Medaya are joined by scholar and translator Joyce Zonana, who discusses her translation of Henri Bosco’s 1946 novel Malicroix. This is the first time the French novel has been translated into English. The post French Connections: Hirokazu Kore-eda on The Truth; Joyce Zonana on Henri Bosco’s Malicroix appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/3gN0O7h via IFTTT

The new documentary Disclosure captures the history of trans representation in Hollywood and mainstream media, with particular attention to the ways in which racism and misogyny influence the portrayal of those who transgress society’s gender norms in order to live their truth. In a wide-ranging discussion, Director Sam Feder and Laverne Cox, star of Orange is the New Black, talk with Medaya and Eric about what has been gained in recent years as well as the challenges ahead as transgender stories, writers, directors, and performers take center stage. Also, Percival Everett, author of Telephone, returns to recommend Laurence Sterne’s classic Tristam Shandy, as well as Michael Winterbottom’s recent film adaptation: Tristam Shady: A Cock and Bull Story. The post Changing the Conversation: Laverne Cox and Sam Feder on Trans Representation appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/3i5QNDs via IFTTT

Kate and Medaya talk to the critic and writer Olivia Laing about her new collection of essays Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. The three discuss the role of art in dark times, Olivia’s environmental activist youth and what she turns to during a crisis. Then, Lucy Ives joins the hosts to discuss the legacy of the artist, architect and writer Madeline Gins, whose work was recently collected into a comprehensive reader titled The Saddest Thing is That I Have Had to Use Words. The post Art in an Emergency: Talking to Olivia Laing and Lucy Ives appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/3ejnZ7Z via IFTTT

One surefire way to lift yourself out of the shelter-in-place doldrums is to engage with someone whose enthusiasm for life and literature is more infectious than any coronavirus. Wayne Koestenbaum joins Kate, Eric, and Daya to discuss his new collection of essays Figure it Out; what ensues is a conversation with exuberant inspirations at every turn. Share this one with your friends, it will renew their faith in living the literary life. Also, Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings, returns to recommend two foreboding works of recent literature (as if to counterbalance Wayne’s optimism): C Pam Zhang’s novel How Much of These Hills is Gold; and Joyelle McSweeney’s new book of poetry Toxicon and Ariadne. The post Wayne Koestenbaum’s Whirlwind of Wit & Wisdom appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/3bNktRm via IFTTT

Subscribe on iTunes | Spotify | SoundCloud | This week we bring you two tales of lore from the olden days of Queer LA. First, Kate, Daya, and Eric are joined by Sharp and Durk Dehner from the Tom of Finland Foundation to tell the story of the legendary gay artist Touko Valio Laaksonen, who immigrated to Los Angeles, on the occasion of Tom’s 100th birthday. Then, Rachel Mason drops by to talk about her documentary Circus of Books, which recently debuted on Netflix, about the legendary porn bookstore in Southern California that was owned and operated by Rachel’s parents. This is the ninth episode in our series on LA and Southern California writers, artists and filmmakers. This episode of the LARB Radio Hour is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov . Any findings, opinions, or conclusions contained herein are not necessarily those of the California Arts Council.                 ...

Subscribe on iTunes | Spotify | SoundCloud | This week, we’re joined by Felicia Angeja Viator, author of To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America . Eric, Kate and Medaya talk with Felicia about the rise of gangsta rap in Los Angeles, the sounds and culture that defined the era, the artists and performers who rose to stardom, and how we still see the effects of that sound in music today.  Also, artist Harry Dodge, author of My Meteorite, returns to recommend Crudo A Novel by Olivia Laing LISTEN TO LIVE AND DEFY PLAYLIST BELOW The post It Was A Good Day: Talking the Rise of Gangsta Rap with Felicia Angeja Viator appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/34y0aFW via IFTTT

February was Oscars month. Accordingly, LARB, which proudly makes its home in “the movie capital of the world,” featured a number of articles on cinema of every kind — foreign and domestic, new and old, big-budget and independent. Below you will find deep considerations of Parasite and Get Out , Motherless Brooklyn and Little Women , Ritwik Ghatak and The Report , as well as interviews with Zia Anger and Karim Aïnouz, and looks back at the making of Chinatown and William Faulkner’s stint in Hollywood. — LARB Editorial The post The Monthly Digest: March 2020 appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books . from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2vxhxtd via IFTTT

Here’s to Life with Tori Reid Episode 02: Phylicia Rashad – What Makes Phylicia, Phylicia?         https://losangelesreviewofbooks.box.com/shared/static/9y2zi592y137algko3192g2oh6w6b5in.mp3   I am reunited with an icon, mentor and source of personal inspiration.  In an unforgettable conversation, we explore what makes Phylicia, Phylicia, the sweetness of her childhood, love and marriage, self care with 40 years of meditation, what she’s grappled with, those special years on the Cosby Show, her film debut in Tim Reid’s Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored along with Al Freeman, Jr, and Paula Kelly, completing her narrating Academy Award–winning storyteller Kobe Bryant’s, the Wizenard Series , her directorial Broadway debut with “Blue”, a jazz play by playwright Charles Randolph-Wright , and so much more!  Here’s to America’s Mom, Phylicia Rashad. – Tori Reid   Credits: Executive Producer:  Patrick A. Howell Producer:  Tori R...

[I]t followed me and made everything seem dark and dreary. My feeling of horror, instead of leaving me, was increasing. “What nonsense!” I said to myself. “Why am I so dejected? What am I afraid of?” “You are afraid of me” — I heard the voice of Death — “I am here.” — Leo Tolstoy ¤ ONE NIGHT, when Irvin Yalom was 14, his 46-year-old father suddenly developed such a severe chest pain that the family feared a heart attack. In her despair, young Irvin’s mother accused him of killing his father by being such a disobedient son. Yalom remembers waiting for a doctor, his 14-year-old self filled with horror, guilt, and anger. When, at 3:00 a.m., the doctor finally came, he let young Irvin listen through a stethoscope to his father’s strong heartbeat and assured the panicked boy that everything was going to be alright. “Then and there I decided to be like him,” writes Yalom in his memoir Becoming Myself . He would dedicate his life to comforting those who, like his father, and like hi...

SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES | SPOTIFY | SOUNDCLOUD | Kate Wolf talks with “It Girl” Natasha Stagg about her new essay collection from Semiotexte: Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media 2011-19. Natasha explains overcoming her reluctance to move to NYC, how she landed in the fashion world – simultaneously at its center and on the periphery – and what she discovered there. This most-priveleged sphere in the capital of the world is just part of the scenery: where the old is new again until the moment of re-interpretation passes; the thrill of creativity is tangible, yet nothing to get excited about; and it’s most definitely post-Post-Modern yet pastiche, nostalgia, and appropriation remain the order of day. Telling tales of Late Capitalism in its interminable phase. The conversation also inspires Medaya Ocher, LARB’s Managing Editor, to reveal details of her previous life as a Parisian fashion photographer. Also, Ariana Reines, author of the A Sand Book, returns to recommend two exceptional w...

Subscribe on iTunes | Spotify | SoundCloud | The redemptive power of oral history is at the heart of Susan Straight’s new memoir, In The Country Of Women; and also in this installment of the LARB Radio Hour, the first in a special series featuring Los Angeles authors. As Susan relates the amazing stories of the women in her family from across many generations to host Kate Wolf, the spirit and character of these women is conjured back to life. Our troubled times are presaged in the tragedies and violence encountered by Susan’s ancestors; but the promise, not yet extinguished, of this blood-stained land shines through from these women of the past to their sisters in the present. Also, filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, whose latest film is American Factory, return to recommend four books: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead; The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson; and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander....

Subscribe on iTunes | Spotify | SoundCloud | One of the most pressing issues facing American society is the rise of a radical anti-government right wing movement over the past few decades; and now, in particular, its relationship to President Trump. Author Anthony McCann goes right to heart of this movement in his new book Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff, the product of his first hand experience covering the Ammon Bundy-led occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in early 2016. In this illuminating conversation with co-hosts Kate Wolf, Eric Newman, and Medaya Ocher, McCann’s observations about the array of characters at the heart of this dramatic stand off in isolated rural America both confirm and dramatically deny expectations. What is clear is that this movement, for worse not for better, now has deep roots in our country. Yet McCann’s unflinching reporting points a way forward: nothing is to be gained by further isolation and vilif...

BECAUSE POETRY IS so attuned to death, it is common practice to look back at a poet’s work when he or she has died and consider how they confronted their mortality. When Mary Oliver died, “The Summer Day” gained an almost divine incandescence, and when W. S. Merwin died in March, many returned to his poem “For the Anniversary of My Death.” Because poetry, in the simplest terms, interrogates what it means to exist, it necessarily asks what it means to die. “Poetry begins with elegy,” wrote Donald Hall. For Linda Gregg, who passed away at the age of 76 in March, confronting death was merely an extension of the problems she found in confronting life. “I am content to live in silence / with the dead,” she wrote in one of her later poems, “Hearing the Gods.” Silence, in all its varying forms, was of utmost concern to Gregg: silence as the unseen or the invisible, as the unsaid or unsayable. This silence isn’t an empty void or lack of vitality but something akin to the “sound of the gods / ...

FROM THE OPENING PAGES of Miracle Creek , Angie Kim creates an intense atmosphere of foreboding and suspense, building swiftly to the event that triggers the rest of her debut novel, unraveling so many lives and lies. Young Yoo, the wife of Pak Yoo, goes about her normal routine in Miracle Creek, Virginia, one August evening in 2008. Except her quotidian tasks are rather unusual: she and her husband offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy — also known as HBOT — in their barn, of all places. Their business, Miracle Submarine, provides a pressurized chamber where the air is filled with 100 percent oxygen. Her household routine is interrupted by a call from her husband, asking her to cover for him at post while their clients (patients) are sealed inside the chamber. He requests that she tell no one, and emphasizes that no one should ever know he stepped away. In the six pages that open the novel — a section titled, rather ominously, “The Incident” — we are immersed in and share Young’s anxiety ...

THERE IS A SCENE in Josip Novakovich’s new short story collection Honey in the Carcase in which a drowning six-year-old narrator admires the play of light on the surface above his head. He has helped his siblings paddle an air raft into the Adriatic Sea despite not knowing how to swim. As he sinks toward the bottom, he feels more wonder than panic, noting, “The shimmering surface of the water was like melted lead, which I had melted from stolen lead pipes and poured into cups.” Beauty and brutality mingle everywhere in the collection, which is set in the United States and in the author’s country of birth: Yugoslavia until 1991 and Croatia thereafter. The stories fall on either side of that divide and include narratives set during Tito’s Yugoslavia — communism “with a human face” — and the vicious wars that left more than 100,000 dead. Most of the book’s players are ordinary people: a Slavonian beekeeper with grown children, a student hitchhiker, two young brothers who attempt to outd...

MY FATHER, who doesn’t tell me much, once told me that I was conceived on the night of an Alabama concert. Dates of conception can be difficult to pinpoint, so the strange precision of this recollection makes me trust it. Chances are my father would recall a concert — what reason would he have to make up something like that? Especially since he hated country music. My father was from Cincinnati. He was big into classic rock, but even more than that, he was committed to Reds baseball. He worshipped Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, and Johnny Bench, and it strikes me now that the scruffy beauty that marked the on-field play of the Big Red Machine was, in some odd way, characteristic of his favorite bands, too. He loved raunchy guitars, three-part harmony, hair.  Let It Be –era Beatles, to be sure, but also Journey, Steely Dan, The Moody Blues. On Side A of my father’s life was Kansas’s “Carry On Wayward Son,” on Side B a four-minute Steven Stills guitar solo. His tastes were hardly high...

THOSE WHO DERIDE MILLENNIALS as lazy, selfish, and entitled would do well to consider Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Buttigieg has a résumé that would put most baby boomers to shame. Since graduating from Harvard, in 2004, he’s earned a Rhodes Scholarship; worked as a McKinsey consultant; served in Afghanistan with the US Navy; and won city-wide office with more than 70 percent of the vote. Twice. Having just barely “attained to the Age of thirty five Years,” the threshold mandated in the Constitution, Buttigieg has now turned his ambitions to the White House. The results have been promising: a May 9 Monmouth poll puts Buttigieg third in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Nationally, too, Mayor Pete is building momentum — as of last week, Quinnipiac had him ahead of party stars like Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke. Everything can and will change, but it’s a credit to Buttigieg’s vision, intelligence, and thought...