Wednesday, January 2 - Duberman on Zinn

Wednesday night at 8 PM on KPFK 90.7 FM:  MARTIN DUBERMAN.  Duberman is a scholar, activist and memoirist whose life stories of Left luminaries and his own memoir, Cures:  A Gay Man’s Odyssey, make him one of our favorite biographers.  Paul Robeson.  Now, two years after historian-activist Howard Zinn’s death, Duberman arrives with a biography of a beloved and esteemed figure, who also happened to be his friend and peer.  The life of a man who eschewed personality politics, yet became a singularly charming and popular ambassador of people’s politics is told, warts and all, by my guest Martin Duberman, in Howard Zinn:  A Life on the Left.  Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he founded and directed the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies.  His achievements as a writer and scholar are of course impressive, and he’s been a role model for many, who admire his commitment to both the activist life and to scholarship.  He spoke with me most recently on Bibliocracy about his parallel biographical telling of the lives of two other movement comrades, Barbara Deming and David McReynolds.  Thanks for listening, on the radio, online or as a free download from the station’s archives.  Support community media.

Wednesday, December 26

Wednesday night at 8 PM on Bibliocracy, on KPFK 90.7 FM:  JEFFREY LAMAR COLEMAN.  Documenting is often discovering, or rediscovering, and in collecting poems from the Civil Rights era, poet and editor Jeffrey Lamar Coleman both tells and retells that story.  Words of Protest, Words of Freedom:  Poetry of the American Civil Rights Movement and Era, edited by Coleman, is the first anthology of  poems written during and in response to the struggle, 1955 to 1975.  It includes familiar work by well-known poets - even defining work - but also features less celebrated writing and, for this reader, introduces key moments memorialized in poems by way of expanding, complicating, focusing those years.  Among the 100 well-known poets are Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucile Clifton, Auden and Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg, Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez, as well as relatively obscure or forgotten voices.  This collection is a prismatic telling, finally, with many, many ways into an appreciation of a cultural and political moment and its echoes today.  From Duke University Press, Words of Protest, Words of Freedom is organized in fourteen thematic chapters, with introductions to each, reminding the reader of what’s at stake in each section by way of events which inspired or provoked.  Jeffrey Lamar Coleman is author of Spirits Distilled: Poems, and is a much published poet and essayists.  He teaches at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and lectures throughout the United States on the history and poetry of the American Civil Rights Movement.  Thanks for listening on the radio, online, or as a free download from the station’s archives.  Happy Holidays.  Peace.  

Wednesday, December 19 - 100 Greatest Part II

Tonight on Bibliocracy, 8 PM on KPFK:  PETER DREIR.  It’s the second of a special two-part show dedicated to a book titled The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20^th Century:  A Social Justice Hall of Fame.  Before th KPFK Fund Drive I talked with its author, Professor Peter Dreier about some great activists I cherry-picked for a variety of reasons, some toward reminding myself and readers, or toward correcting the details of their autobiographies.  This week I thought we’d talk about those individuals with a connection to Southern California, which I think nicely bookends another recent book called A People’s Guide to Los Angeles.  Peter Dreier is a scholar and teacher you could talk with for hours, so I’ve had to pick my questions carefully to fit.  He is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College, and writes for the Nation, LA Times, American Prospect.  He dedicated this book to his daughters, but I have to say that so many people including yours truly, like to imagine he’s written it for them.  Thanks, Peter Dreier.  And, yes, this makes a most excellent holiday gift!  Listen on the radio tonight, online or as a free download available at the KPFK archives.  Happy Holidays.  Peace.  War is Over if You Want It!  Guns are Controlled if You Want It!