Portside

Carolina poet Dan Albergotti ponders the death of democracy--and worse--asking: "Who chose this suicide?"

Based on research during and immediately following World War 2, this pathbreaking book analyzed the proclivities individuals might have toward support for authoritarian regimes, stressing preconceived attitudes on race, class, sexuality and nationalism, concluding that fascism’s attraction came not (or not just) from political agreement but from a personality structured by larger, repressive social forces in which sociological influences upon ideology are mediated.

Claude McKay (1889-1948) was a Jamaican-born poet and novelist who became one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s upsurge of black culture that was a central feature of the jazz age. He was also a leading left wing intellectual of the era. This newly discovered novel is a literary and cultural milestone.

Food is central to the Gullah way of life. The keepers of Black Southern coastal communities share their insights about retaining their culture in the face of significant change.

As if you needed more reasons to watch a show starring Oscar-winner Julie Andrews, her new Netflix children's show, Julie's Greenroom, features a character who identifies as gender neutral.

The review slams four female writers for misdiagnosing the alienation attendant to contemporary women's roles by urging changes in behavior without analyzing the work/household dynamic and persistent gender inequality, preferring either a retreat into so-called womanly roles or encouraging masculine-style individualism. They ignore redefining attitudes toward care and care workers, and securing for them social recognition and material support.

The Egyptian-born, Brooklyn-based poet Marwa Halal focuses on the absurdity of labeling diverse people inhabiting a certain portion of our global maps as part of the same (misunderstood) "middle east."

The integration of women students into the elite all-male Ivy League student bodies was a relatively recent (largely late1960s) phenomenon, the product less of a broader consciousness among university trustees and more due to the fact that these universities were losing a share of high-achieving college men to other elite schools that were already co-educational.

Derek Walcott, one of the finest poets of our times, died March 17 in St. Lucia, where he was born. He was 87 years old. His poetry helped illuminate the interconnections between the natural and the social worlds. Gabrielle Bellot, a staff writer for Literary Hub who grew up in the Commonwealth of Dominica, offers this appreciation.

Get Out opens with a familiar horror-movie trope. Someone walking alone down a dark street stalked by a mysterious force. That the setting is an idyllic suburb, the someone is a young, increasingly panicked black man, and the predator is driving a white car gives the scenario an unmistakable reality. The scene grows disturbing. You may flash on Trayvon Martin. That the black youth is not shot but rather abducted is a dreamlike condensation of the movie to come.