Sea Change
A city on fire, James Baldwin’s radicalization, the new fascism, and more
October 6, 2022
In this week’s issue of Public Seminar: James Carroll on an era of “usable” nuclear weapons, Hannah H. Kim on Hollywood versus the humanities, Amanda Gunn on poetry through grief, and more.
Migration
Susan Hartman chats with Marisa Budlong about City of Refugees (Beacon Press, 2022), her new book documenting the stories of refugees who resettled in—and transformed—the upstate city of Utica, New York. “You hope to gain their trust. You hope not to be intrusive—basically to disappear, so that they can be in their living room doing things, maybe even having an argument in front of you, and they’re not worried anymore. You’re just a pillow on the couch.” (October 4, 2022)
Utica was a vibrant industrial town in the 1950s, but a few decades later it was a city on fire. By the mid-nineties, there were more than 300 fires a year. You could smell smoke in the city’s air, one resident told Hartman: “Every night before going to sleep, she laid out her clothes and keys—just as the firefighters did—so she could quickly get out the door. ‘You could hear the sirens—Utica’s not a big city.’” Read an excerpt from City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town, courtesy of Susan Hartman and Beacon Press. (October 4, 2022)
The Balance of Power
“Let’s say the era of usable nukes is dawning. What, in the absence of the threat of suicidal levels of destruction, would form the structure of verifiable mutual restraint? The Ukraine war has revealed, that is, that the single stoutest pillar of the current strategic ‘balance’ is off kilter—a dangerously leaning tower, as it were, of peace.” James Carroll examines the “Balance of Terror” in Part 5 of his reckoning with nuclear war. (October 3, 2022)
In examining European fascism’s transatlantic pivot, Lucas Dolan finds key influences close to home. “Geert Wilders—now a marginal figure in Dutch politics—was one of the most important figures in effecting a move toward a more transatlantic far-right politics. Rather than fascist ideologues, Wilders’ heroes were Churchill, Reagan, and Thatcher. His most important political ally, Martin Bosma, studied at New York City’s New School for Social Research during the 1990s and used his time in the United States to immerse himself in the works of Republican media strategists and neoconservative thinkers.” (October 3, 2022)
Narrative Matters
“As a philosophy professor specializing in fiction, I had high hopes for Three Thousand Years of Longing, which features a narratologist—someone who studies stories.” Hannah H. Kim sees much to enjoy in George Millers’s new film—but not, alas, its depiction of humanities scholars. (October 5, 2022)
In the latest podcast episode of Multi-Verse, Amanda Gunn shares her poem “What You Meant” and chats with Evangeline Riddiford Graham about writing through grief and witnessing a loved one’s life in poetry. (October 5, 2022)
Understanding James Baldwin
“On the third Sunday after the march, September 15, 1963, six Black children were killed in three separate incidents—one of which was the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church—in Birmingham. That day marked the end of Baldwin’s brief career as a literary celebrity and the beginning of his radicalization, as such.” In an excerpt from the new issue of James Baldwin Review, Ed Pavlić charts the “radical pulse” of James Baldwin’s writing and activism. (October 4, 2022)
For years, Ijeoma N. Njaka was afraid of failing to understand James Baldwin. As she shares in James Baldwin Review 8, all that changed when she went to see a production of The Amen Corner. (October 5, 2022)