Molly Crabapple : Here Where We Live Is Our Country : The Story of the Jewish Bund

One of the elements that makes Molly Crabapple’s latest book so remarkable is, not only the remarkable stories it unearths and retells, but more specifically how she tells these stories, these erased stories, these stories meant to be forgotten. Not only does she tell them in a dynamic, often thrilling, way, she also does so in a way that somehow opens up the history and gifts it to contemporary movements, organizers and their artists. You can feel how alive to the moment Molly’s book of history is in the words of everyone who praises it. Whether Naomi Klein calling it a “gripping, human story of love, idealism and betrayal” or Tareq Baconi “a road map for our revolution today” and we explore this together—how to write, in whatever genre, in a way that offers one’s work to anti-colonial movements of liberation.

A great conversation to pair today’s with is the recent episode with Jordy Rosenberg, who asks many of these same questions, but within the realm of fiction. After Jordy and my conversation had aired, Jordy sent me a second contribution to the bonus audio archive, a reading of the Palestinian writer and performance artist Fargo Tbakhi’s “Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide.” This joins many contributions from past guests whether from Naomi Klein, Dionne Brand, Isabella Hammad, or Omar El Akkad. You can check out all the potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community, including access to the bonus audio archive, at the show’s Patreon page.

Finally here is the BookShop for today.