WBEZ | Chicago Public Library

'The Great Migration' Conversation with Timuel D. Black Jr., Linda Johnson Rice & Adam Green

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:46:00 -0500

As part of the programming for the 2013-14 One Book, One Chicago selection, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story Of America’s Great Migration, the Chicago Public Library welcomed Timuel D. Black Jr., Linda Johnson Rice and Adam Green for an engaging conversation of how the Great Migration shaped their lives and the city of Chicago.

Timuel D. Black, Jr., a recent Champion of Freedom Award recipient, is a Chicago educator, activist and historian who has written extensively on the Great Migration in his books Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s First Wave of Black Migration and Bridges of Memory Volume 2:Chicago’s Second Generation of Black Migration.

Linda Johnson Rice’s parents, John and Eunice Johnson, came to Chicago from the South and built the Johnson Publishing Company, one of the world’s most successful black-owned media companies of which Ms. Rice is President and CEO.

University of Chicago History Professor Adam Green, writes about the Great Migration in his books Selling the Race: The Culture and Community in Black Chicago, 1940-1955 and Time Longer than Rope: Studies in African American Activism, 1850-1950.

Recorded live Monday, May 6, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

'Push' author Sapphire revisits childhood abuse in second novel

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0500

[Trigger Warning]

Sapphire does not shy away from difficult subjects.

The author, who chose her pen name as a salute to strong black women, is known for penning devastatingly realized stories of childhood sexual abuse and trauma. Her 1996 novel Push tells the story of Claireece “Precious” Jones, an illiterate, obese, 16-year-old girl pregnant with a second child by her own father. The novel was adapted in 2009, and the resulting film, Precious, garnered many accolades, including two Academy Awards. But the film also stirred controversy with its graphic depictions of incest and domestic abuse.

Sapphire was herself the victim of childhood sexual assault. In 2010 she told the London Evening Standard that her father, a Korean War vet, had molested her at age eight. Her mother abandoned their family five years later.

“It was traumatic — but to be left with our crazy dad, doubly so," she told the paper.

She created the character precious from an amalgam of her own experiences and those of students she later mentored in Harlem.

Sapphire followed Push with a sequel, The Kid, in 2011. As the novel opens, we learn that Precious has died of AIDS, leaving her nine-year-old son Abdul alone in the world.

Abdul is sent to live in a Catholic orphanage, and what befalls him there is brutal and heartbreaking -- and all too familiar to anyone who follows the ever-unfolding story of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. (A new wrinkle in that story unfolded just this week, as files released by the Diocese of Joliet revealed decades of abuse hidden by high-level clergy.)

Abdul is sexually assaulted by a priest during his time in the orphanage. And as sometimes happens to those who have been abused, he goes on in turn to become an abuser, raping younger, weaker boys living in the orphanage.

“While numerous heterosexual black male writers and critics have bemoaned the . . . one-dimensional portrait of black man as victimizer, few have been interested in or have had the courage to explore the obvious other end of the stick: the black male as victim of sexual abuse,” Sapphire said at a talk in Chicago last week, reading from a Q & A section published alongside her novel. “The Kid, among other things, begins an accurate portrayal of what happens to many young males who have been abused and their sometimes hideous response.”

The results for Abdul are devastating, as they were for his mother. And while Push addressed the failure of the nuclear family to protect its children, The Kid takes up the failure of institutions charged with their care.

“We’re really looking at the abandoning of the social contract in a way we didn’t see in Push,” Sapphire said. “That was something I really wanted to show: What happens when everything except the soul of the individuals fails?”

Sapphire read two passages from The Kid during her appearance at Chicago Public Library. We’ve included an excerpt of her talk here in audio form, but please be warned. . . .

TRIGGER WARNING: The book excerpt Sapphire reads here includes a graphic rape scene, in addition to a later scene which shows some redemption and healing for her main character.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Sapphire spoke at an event presented by Chicago Public Library in March. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.

Michael Hainey

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:40:00 -0600

Michael Hainey, Chicago native and deputy editor at GQ appears in conversation with Bill Savage of Northwestern University. In his gripping memoir After Visiting Friends, Hainey sets out to answer questions about his father’s death at age 35. Bob Hainey was a rising star at the Chicago Sun-Times when he died, and Michael was six. Now a seasoned reporter himself, Hainey has written a stirring portrait of a family and an honest look at a legendary time in Chicago newspapers, when an honor code of secrecy and silence bonded newspaper writers together.

Recorded live Monday, Febrauary 25, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

Gillian Flynn discusses new book, "Gone Girl"

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:05:00 -0600

Gillian Flynn is the author of Gone Girl, a best seller on The New York Times best seller fiction list. The Chicago writer is a former TV critic for Entertainment Weekly. Her previous novels are Sharp Objects, an Edgar Award finalist and the winner of two of Britain's Dagger Awards, and Dark Places. This event was presented by the Society of Midland Authors, an organization established in 1915 for published authors in the Midwest. The Chicago Public Library co-hosted the event.

Recorded Wednesday February 13, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

Neil Shubin

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:32:00 -0600

From one of our finest and most popular science writers comes the answer to a scientific mystery as big as the world itself: How are the events that formed our solar system billions of years ago embedded inside each of us? Neil Shubin (Your Inner Fish) presents his new book, The Universe Within, in which he takes an expansive approach to the question of why we look the way we do. Presented in partnership with the Illinois Science Council.

Recorded live Monday, February 11, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:58:00 -0600

The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench in her new book, My Beloved World. The journey recounted in this memoir offers testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself.

Recorded Thursday, January 30, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

Greg Borzo

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:17:00 -0600

Travel back to the days when Chicago had the largest cable car system the world had ever seen. Greg Borzo, author of the popular The Chicago "L,” discusses his new book Chicago Cable Cars in a lavishly illustrated PowerPoint presentation. Borzo is joined in conversation with Jacob Kaplan, editor of ForgottenChicago.com.

Recorded live Thursday, January 24, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

The wisdom of bodies, on stage

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 08:00:00 -0600

Our bodies store all kinds of knowledge and information, whether it’s an old knee injury that flares up when it rains, muscles that develop their own memory, or the healing touch of a loved one.

The members of Chicago’s Neighborhood Writing Alliance know this. For the last half year, the non-profit group – which helps adults in underserved neighborhoods write, publish and perform their own stories – has been focused on the topic of “body wisdom.” It’s the theme of the forthcoming issue of their publication, The Journal of Ordinary Thought, and of a performance they staged back in December at Chicago Public Library. (More on that in a minute.)

You can think of body wisdom, loosely, as what our bodies know, although the NWA staged many brainstorming sessions and discarded many giant pads of white paper trying to come up with a shared definition, according to programming director Rachael Hudak.

“There were different interpretations of what wisdom is and where it comes from, whether [it comes from] your ancestors, the house you grew up in, or physical interactions with your environment,” she said in an interview.

These conversations led the group to some powerful, but often uncomfortable, places. Not all of the meanings carried by our bodies are pleasant or pain-free, nor are the judgments others can bring to our physical selves.

“I could definitely see writers at the start of the workshops being shy writing about particular issues – illness and terminal cancer, weight issues and unemployment,” Hudak said. “I don’t think [these issues] felt safe to present on stage.”

But, she said, that changed as they talked and collaborated more and worked with storytelling artist Glenda Zahra Baker to plan their December performance.

For that event, Hudak and her colleagues created a mash-up of the work submitted by participating writers, then assigned lines to people who hadn’t written them. That created a group identity and support structure, which Hudak thinks helped the participants build confidence.

“People talked about being judged as fat and not feeling comfortable in their bodies,” she said. “They felt incredibly brave to be up on stage talking about that and to have 12 writers around [them] supporting that.”

You can hear and excerpt of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance’s “Body Wisdom” performance in the audio above.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. The Neighborhood Writing Alliance performed at an event presented by Chicago Public Library in December of 2012. Performers included Pennie Brinson, Baba Tony Brown, Debra Brown, Kucha Brownlee, Helena Marie Carnes-Jeffries, Robert Hare, Alfred Klinger, Allen McNair, Jeanette Moton, David Nekimken, Donna Pecore, Tinamaria Penn, Phyllis Roker, Delores Tolliver and Sharon Warner. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.

Discussion on Harold Washington

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:25:00 -0600

Thirty years after Harold Washington was elected as Chicago’s first black mayor, the Society of Midland Authors will present a panel discussion about Washington’s legacy.

The panel discussion features: Peter Nolan, a former NBC5 reporter whose 2012 book Campaign! The 1983 Election That Rocked Chicago is a firsthand account of Washington’s election as mayor; Timuel Black, author of Bridges of Memory, a two-volume history of black Chicago; Salim Muwakkil, a senior editor at In These Times, a host on WVON-AM 1690, and the author of the text in Harold!: Photographs from the Harold Washington Years; Robert Starks, founder of the Harold Washington Institute for Research and Policy Studies at Northeastern Illinois University.

Recorded live Tuesday, January 8, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

For novelist Don DeLillo, sometimes a single picture is worth more than a thousand words

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 06:00:00 -0500

Novelist Don DeLillo says some of his densest, most complex tomes have been inspired by viewing a single image. Often it's a photograph, or sometimes a painting, or even the blocky, visceral letters of the Greek alphabet carved into the frieze of a temple. The novelist behind classics like Underworld and White Noise was in Chicago last week to accept an award from the Chicago Public Library. Donna Seaman, senior editor for Booklist, spoke with DeLillo and teased out this thread in the author's work.

Take a listen to an extended excerpt from Seaman’s interview with DeLillo, and check out some of the powerful images that spurred him to write.

On the influence of French New Wave cinema:

“I grew up in the Bronx, and we had movie theaters – plenty of them – and we went to the movies frequently, the young guys. Suddenly, a bit later, when I was living in Manhattan, European movies appeared, strikingly different from westerns and Hollywood musicals and so on. Truffaut, Godard, Antonioni – so many good directors. And it began to occur to me that ‘film’ as it was now being called, could have the depth and range of an album. This was new to my mind.”

On the newspaper headlines that inspired the novel Underworld:

“Something made me go to the library. Some sense of importance beyond the [famous Brooklyn Dodgers vs. New York Giants baseball game]. I went and found the front page for The New York Times the day after the ball game, Oct. 4, 1951. . . The second headline across the page was ‘Soviets explode nuclear bomb.’ I saw these two headlines, literally, in a pictorial way, the way they were matched, each followed by three columns of type, and of course some sort of historical resonance taking place. Bobby Thompson’s home run became known immediately as the ‘Shot heard ‘round the world,’ which was a kind of American vanity, assuming that everyone in the world was aware of this ballgame. This got me started on Underworld.”

On the influence of Baader-Meinhof, Gerhard Richter’s painting series about the left-wing German militant group:

“The first time I saw these paintings I wasn’t that influenced by them; I wasn’t that impressed by them. But when I saw them again and then again, I began to see things I hadn’t seen the first time. I don’t know if I could tell you what I saw – I’m not an art critic . . . And so I wrote a short story about a woman sitting alone in a gallery. I tried to discover who she was and what would happen.”

On the influence of a single image of September 11th:

“Something in this photograph just hit me. There were much more dramatic photographs; I don’t know why it was this one. About a day later it occurred to me: the briefcase was not his. This is what inspired me to write the novel [Falling Man]. Essentially to find out whose briefcase he was carrying.”

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Don DeLillo spoke at an event presented by Chicago Public Library earlier this month. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.