Portside

The Life and Death of Words, People, and Even Nature: From Walking Libraries and a God Named “Word” to What Sherlock Holmes Never Said. Passages excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s new book, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History (Nation Books).

The Vietnamese-American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen reflects on his ‘mea culpa’ with Israeli publishers, the diminishing power of Israeli and U.S. propaganda, and why cultural figures must take a public stance on Palestinian rights.

Nikki Giovanni, as a writer, she tackled race, gender, sex, politics and love. She was also a public intellectual who appeared on television and toured the country.

The Harlem Renaissance changed the world. We’ve gathered dozens of images, many that we’ve never published, showing the people and the art that they created.

James Baldwin was fascinated with eloquence itself, the soaring phrase, the rhythm pushed hard, the sharp and glorious ring of a sentence.

We cannot pin our hopes on one election, person, victory. What we can do is dig in for the struggle ahead. Art Works provides a reminder of our history of art and activism, the inspiration of past struggles, and the tools for what lies in our future.

During the attack, the more bombs Israel detonated, the more stories I told, and the more I read. Telling stories was my way of resisting. It was all I could do.

Ariel Dorfman Has Some Recommendations for Culturally Illiterate Presidents and Autocrats