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Borderland

Amy Meier portside.org
Worried about the Great Wall separating Mexico from the USA? California poet Amy Meier offers a mild antidote to your fears.

Franz Kafka: In His Times and Ours

Alan Wald Against the Current #188
For the author of the work under review--much heralded by the reviewer--Czech novelist Franz Kafka was no chronic pessimist or dour, fatalistic misbeliever in human emancipation, but a consistent partisan artist siding with the humiliated.

An Uneven Tribute to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Lenika Cruz The Atlantic
In HBO's film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, you learn about the miraculous clump of cells that changed medical science forever before really learning about the person who made and was killed by them. In 1951, a 31-year-old African American woman named Henrietta Lacks learned she was dying of cervical cancer. She sought treatment from a then-segregated Johns Hopkins Medical Center where a piece of her tumor was removed without her knowledge for ongoing research.

Château Neuro: how the brain creates flavor

Steven Shapin LA Review of Books
Gordon Shepherd’s compact Neuroenology is a straightforwardly didactic exercise, tightly focused on wine. It's a companion to his previous work, Neurogastronomy (2012), a well-received study of “how the brain creates flavor,” mostly about food. Lots of wine drinkers, and even wine writers, don’t know some of the facts about wine sensation that Shepherd wants us to learn.

Marque Richardson on His Big Episode of Dear White People and How Art Can Be Activism

Jackson McHenry Vulture
In the wrenching fifth episode of the series, Reggie gets into a fight with a white character who uses the N-word at a party, then winds up held at gunpoint by the campus police. As Richardson explained, the episode, which was directed by Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins, rejiggered the structure of the show and forced the writers to figure out a new way forward.

Where Will You Go When Things Get Worse?

Susan Cohen portside
Our ship of state, writes Berkeley poet Susan Cohen, may be facing extinction, but there's no practical escape that will suffice; alternatively, we may resist.

The Stubborn Optimist: Following the Persevering Example of the Writer and Activist Grace Paley

Nicholas Dames The Atlantic
Writer, poet, college teacher, political activist, peace agitator and feminist,Grace Paley was a well-known and highly respected commodity to those of us active in left protest during the 1960 and much later. This new collection of her writings should remind us of what we justifiably admired most, not just her talent as a writer but her commitment to the struggle and the long haul.