Portside

The duality of Hamilton is difficult and challenging and frankly upsetting. That’s probably why Hamilton has since its Broadway debut spawned countless takes and critiques attempting to navigate its competing readings, trying to define it as either

“I’d like us to rethink/What it is to be a nation,” writes the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

I often used to look at the union work as something like walking a tightrope backwards while juggling without a net … The wire must be made of grassroots. The moment the union highwire artist feels those grassroots under foot, they know they are safe

In this essay, Tim Whitmarsh challenges what most of us were taught, and what we think we know, about the Ancient world and the idea of "race."

"I stand with Black Lives Matter but still, as I watched the obligatory scene of Vietnamese soldiers getting shot and killed for the thousandth time, I thought: Does it make any difference if politically conscious Black men kill us?"

The debate over Aunt Jemima and other food mascots and their own problematic brand marketing stirred up a lot of curiosity about food and race; these books about food and Black identity add to the conversation.

The team of misfits is back and they're tackling a new villain — trauma.

The coronavirus reveals evils of our economic systems, the poet suggests maybe it's time for confiscating some wealth.

Updating his 2005 The Monster at Our Door, Davis views the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of previous viral catastrophes, exposing the key roles of agribusiness, the fast food industries, corrupt governments and a capitalist system out of control

These two books are helpful background sources for the issues involved in today's protests for black lives. Although each is a few years old, they are both worth a second look.