Skip to main content

books

California Today, America Tomorrow

Felicia Wong Boston Review
This book shows how California recovered from the grim, racist 1990s by creating community and labor political coalitions that revitalized the state and put it on a problem-solving oriented, progressive path.

books

Two Intellectual Giants of the American Left

Paul Buhle Monthly Review
Two Marxists associated with the left journal Monthly Review correspond in the years leading up to the publication of their magisterial Monopoly Capital. The reviewer calls the collection "fascinating for its details and quiet wisdom," grappling with a reconfigured empire that persists today.

tv

Racism with Roseanne, in real time

Khaled A Beydoun Al Jazeera
Those who contended that Roseanne shouldn't have been fired for her views, would not have backed Colin Kaepernick's right to free expression or any of his NFL colleagues', who are threatened with a ban for kneeling during the national anthem in protest against racism.

food

Chia Seeds: Update

editors, Harvard T. H. Chan Newsletter Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Chia seeds are a complete protein, containing all nine essential amino acids that cannot be made by the body. Chia seeds have been cultivated as a food source as early as 3500 BC; they come from the plant Salvia hispanica L., and were at one time a major food crop in Mexico and Guatemala. They may contribute to disease prevention as part of a varied plant-rich diet and other healthy lifestyle behaviors.

poetry

Boy White American

Amy O'Reilly Tar River Poetry
Amy O’Reilly’s “Boy White American” puts her finger not so gently on the dangers in a Trumpian universe of gender roles.

poetry

To Kneel

Kathy Engel The Root
As the moguls of the National Football League coerce the athletes to abandon their protests against racism, Kathy Engel’s poem reminds us of the larger stakes for us all.

film

The Breadwinner Review – A Girl’s Courage on the Streets of Kabul

Mark Kermode The Guardian
An Irish-Canadian-Luxembourgish co-production, adapted from Deborah Ellis’s much-loved YA novel, it’s a tale of youthful fortitude in Taliban-era Afghanistan that has something of the defiant feminist spirit of the French-Iranian gem Persepolis.

books

Algorithms of Oppression

Robert Fantina New York Journal of Books
Search engines aren't the innocent, objective tools they pretend to be. Instead, as author Safiya Umoja Noble argues: “They include decision-making protocols that favor corporate elites and the powerful, and they are implicated in global economic and social inequality.”

books

Masters and Servants

Gaiutra Bahadur Boston Review
Situated in modern India, an Indian writer reflects on the still extant disparate roles of masters and slaves as parts of a vestigial system of imperial and racial capitalism, where to be a master was alleged to be a total provider, and to be a servant was not a job but a total identity.
Subscribe to Portside Culture