Portside

A writer tells the story of his left wing family. Reviewer Scipes takes us on a tour.

Food Fraud 2017 highlighted just how serious an issue food fraud has become. It’s organised, criminal and widespread, but there are solutions that we must explore. Consumer trust in the food industry is on the decline in light of scandals such as the inescapable European horse meat incident in 2013 and melamine milk incident in China.These are two examples of what we call food fraud.

How can you attempt to craft a political, artistically rich narrative that trades in the real-life experiences of black and brown women, while ignoring them and the ways sexism intersects with racism? The bodies and histories of black and brown women prove to be useful templates for shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, but our actual voices aren’t.

What is war? Jill McDonough’s alphabetical poem evolves from World War I’s soldier-oriented them vs. us to the hidden terrors of today’s warfare: CIA, NSA, Black Ops, ETC.

With all the toxicity coming out of the White House and the GOP-dominated Congress, it's important to remember how insufferable were the politics of the neoliberal Democrats in power under Bill Clinton. The book under review (an article derived from the book is below) should help us remember how malignant were the Clinton years when it came to economic and social justice.

This week the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, named Tracy K. Smith as the U.S. Poet Laureate for 2017-2018. Smith is the fifth African American poet and the fourth black woman to hold the honor. She is the author of three books of poems, the most recent of which, Life on Mars, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. A link to the Library of Congress citation, and a review, from 2012, of Life on Mars, are posed below.

Wonder Woman doesn't just subvert superhero movie gender tropes, it does it in clever ways.

In the South, America has identified food-system problems and developed solutions. Today, as Americans agitate for food sovereignty, the bold agricultural ideas conceived in the late 1960s by Fannie Lou Hamer and other radical Southerners suggest paths for us to follow out of our food deserts.

Master of None's second season tackles the intersection of queer identities and race, as well as the diversity of New York City, painting a fuller picture of the city than shows that have come before like Girls, or even Louie.

Amid “the caked-on lies” of our political leaders and corporate aggressors, New Zealand poet John Sweden offers no remedies, only an imagined hope.