Portside aims to provide varied material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world, and to change it.
Portside Culture
Posted by Portside on May 13, 2015
Think Progress
First-time author Leila Abdelrazaq has produced a work that, in the words of reviewer Beenish Ahmed, "provides a human face to the often overlooked experiences of refugees." Rendered in the form of a graphic novel, it is a unique visual and literary testament, and a special glimpse into the world of those who have been displace by conflict from their homes and from their familiar worlds.
Posted by Portside on May 12, 2015
JSTOR Daily
Each term my film students watch Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). And each term they react similarly to the scene in which Mookie (Spike Lee) throws a trash can, igniting a neighborhood riot by breaking the window of the pizzeria where he works. Most students of color feel Lee’s character did the right thing while the majority of white students cannot understand why Mookie would do such a thing to his boss. Why this reaction—term after term, year after year?
Posted by Portside on May 11, 2015
www.foodproductdesign.com
Study published in Journal of Nutrition finds fruit, not veggies, associated with lower risks of obesity.
Posted by Portside on May 10, 2015
NPR
Anchored by powerful performances from Oscar nominees Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard, Empire features unapologetically black characters operating in a mostly black world. Nielsen says 7.5 million of them are African-American.But that's where the other controversy about Empire emerges. Because some critics say the show has earned its success by trafficking in "badly written dialogue and ham-fisted stereotypes."
Posted by Portside on May 8, 2015
To The Dark Angels
Amid controversies about surveillance from Big Brothers, there's also the matter of what the Little Brothers and Sisters know and exploit. Colorado poet Jared Smith takes an ironic view of what it means to know too much and therefore nothing at all.
Posted by Portside on May 7, 2015
Truthout
Born into the segregated rural South, James Gustave ("Gus") Speth didn't see the oppression and poverty his black neighbors faced. A confrontation at a northern university with civil-rights advocates in the early 1960s triggered a life-long moral compulsion to support the burgeoning civil rights struggle. The newly minted anti-racist grew into a leading environmentalist, political activist, prolific author and Yale dean. The book under review is his memoir.
Posted by Portside on May 6, 2015
The Atlantic
In her eleventh novel, God Help the Child, Toni Morrison has created what Walton Muyumba calls "a tragicomic jazz opera played out in four parts." Here is his review of this eagerly awaited new work by the artist who is arguably the greatest novelist working in the United States today.