Teju Cole: Open City: A Novel (2011)
Filed under fiction | Tags: · identity, memory, migration, new york, race
A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss, dislocation, and surrender, Teju Cole’s Open City seethes with intelligence. It is a profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our country and our world.
Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders aimlessly, reflecting on his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. Though he is navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation. But it is not only a physical landscape he covers; Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey—which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.
Winner of the 2012 PEN/Hemingway Award.
Publisher Random House, 2011
ISBN 0812980093, 9780812980097
259 pages
review (Boyd Tonkin, The Independent)
review (James Wood, The New Yorker)
review (Miguel Syjuco, The New York Times)
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Stephen Harper: Beyond the Left: The Communist Critique of the Media (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · capitalism, communism, democracy, fascism, journalism, left, marxism, mass media, migration, neoliberalism, politics, television, wikileaks
Attacking the cherished assumptions of liberal media criticism, Beyond the Left updates and recharges the Marxist critique of the media.
The ideological distortions of the conservative media, from Fox News to the Daily Mail, are widely acknowledged and often denounced among contemporary critics and commentators. But what if The Guardian newspaper and BBC news, in fact, constitute the most insidious forms of capitalist propaganda? In a wide-ranging and erudite polemic, Beyond the Left analyses capitalist news and current affairs media from a radical perspective. The book rejects the liberal and pluralist paradigms that often underpin critiques of the media, showing how media texts reflect and reinforce the material interests of the ruling class and arguing that the principal ideological menace today is posed not by the right wing, but by the left-liberal media, as it co-opts and obscures radical political positions and reinforces a range of mystifications, from anti-fascism and humanitarian war to green politics. Drawing on the work of radical media critics as well as the writings of revolutionary communist groups and considering the recent reporting of war, industrial action, immigration and the environment, Beyond the Left updates and recharges the Marxist critique of the media.
Publisher Zero Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing, 2012
ISBN 1846949769, 9781846949760
114 pages
review (Laura Cooke, Socialist Review)
Comment (0)34 Multimedia Magazine (2006–) [Belarusian, English]
Filed under magazine | Tags: · activism, art, belarus, contemporary art, hip hop, migration, music, publishing, sex, street art
34mag.net is an online Belarusian independent youth publication, ran from Minsk since 2006. Aside from its online articles it publishes theme-based issues on CD-ROM of which ISO images can be also downloaded. The issues cover a range of topics including Belarusian art and culture, migration, sex, rap news, street culture, or zine culture. Selected articles are translated to English.
The magazine received several awards including Free Media Pioneer Award at the International Press Institute’s 61st World Congress in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (2012), Free Media Pioneer Award of the International Press Institute (2012), and Gerd Bucerius Prize Award in the category of Free Press of Eastern Europe (2007).
CD-ROM ISO / HTML (Belarusian)
HTML (English)