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Author Archives: Anisfield-Wolf
Advocacy Organization Pushes For “Mother’s Day Our Way”
Reacting to the blah, monochromatic nature of typical of Mother's Day cards, Strong Families, an Alturas, California policy group, launched a line of digital Mother's Day cards cued into the changing demographics of America's families.
These cards represent the families that are "beyond the picket fence": transgender, lesbian, low-income, immigrant, and incarcerated mothers are all featured.
Much like Andrew Solomon's exploration of family diversity in his 2012 book Far From The Tree, these cards contain a more imaginative and inclusive depiction of familial love.
Eveline Shen, executive director of Strong Families, said that the inspiration for this line of cards came from families like her own. “I’m raising my own daughters with my same-sex partner. When they go to the store, they... Read More →
Meet Our 2013 Winners!
The jury has spoken and five new authors will join the Anisfield-Wolf family.
Our 2013 winners are:
Laird Hunt, Kind One, Fiction
Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds, Fiction
Eugene Gloria, My Favorite Warlord, Poetry
Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree, Nonfiction
Wole Soyinka, Lifetime Achievement
“The 2013 Anisfield-Wolf winners are exemplars who broaden our vision of race and diversity,” said Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who chairs the jury. “This year, there is exceptional writing about the war in Iraq, slavery on a Kentucky pig farm, the Filipino experience in the U.S., and the complexity of families in which a child is radically different from parents.”
Gates directs the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, where... Read More →
Anisfield-Wolf Fellow Profiled In The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Lisa Nielson, Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Case Western Reserve University's SAGES program, was profiled in the Plain Dealer's "My Cleveland" column. In it, she talked about the ease of Northeast Ohio compared to her previous stint in New England and her favorite way to spend time outside of the classroom. Previously on the blog, Lisa shared her thoughts on David Livingstone Smith's Less Than Human and how it changed her curriculum.
Read More →
“Less Than Human”: How One Professor Explores Deeper Meaning Behind Dehumanization
By Lisa Nielson, Anisfield-Wolf SAGES Fellow
Lisa Nielson is the Anisfield-Wolf SAGES Fellow at Case Western Reserve University. She has a PhD in historical musicology, with a specialization in Women's Studes, and teaches seminars on the harem, slavery and courtesans.
I was introduced to “Less than Human” last fall when I had the pleasure of hearing David Livingstone Smith speak at the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards ceremony and at Case Western Reserve University the next day. His presentation was riveting, and I felt myself vacillating between awe at the breadth of his work and shock at the horror of what humanity has done through dehumanization.
Judging from the taut silence as the awards audience of 800 heard Smith speak, they had a similar reaction. Listeners occasionally... Read More →
VIDEO: Richard Blanco And Elizabeth Alexander Share Their Experience As Inaugural Poets
For the first time in history, two inaugural poets shared the same stage and spoke about what the experience meant for their lives. Earlier this month, 2009 Inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander (also an Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement winner in 2010) and 2013 Inaugural poet Richard Blanco spoke at Yale University, with Blanco making his first public appearance since inauguration.
"I felt a little less exposed with 800,000 people than I do right now," Blanco joked in front of the small Yale audience. The two spoke about feedback after delivering the poem, Blanco's writing style, and what role poetry can play in the political realm. The conversation between Alexander and Blanco begins at the 29:30 mark.
Did you enjoy Richard Blanco's poem "One Today"? The Library of Congress... Read More →
Are There Any Books You Wouldn’t Want Your Children To Read?
Toni Morrison's Pulitzer-prize winning novel, Beloved, took home the Anisfield-Wolf award for fiction in 1988. In it, a slave, unwilling to see her children grow up and live the same fate as their mother, killed one of her children rather than see them in bondage. Eighteen years later, the mother is visited by a young woman who she believes is the slain infant, returned.
However lauded the work may be, not everyone is a fan. Most recently, a Fairfax County parent has petitioned to ban the book based on the book's content, which she says gave her son nightmares after he read it for his senior-level English class. "I’m not some crazy book burner,” Laura Murphy said. “I have great respect and admiration for our Fairfax County educators. The school system is second to none. But I... Read More →
Happy Birthday, Toni Morrison!
In honor of Ms. Morrison's 82nd birthday, we're looking back at our archives for some of our favorite moments from the esteemed author over the past few years. Take a walk down memory lane with us:
"Beloved" is named one of the "88 Books That Shaped America" by the Library of Congress:
Toni Morrison won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her post-Civil War novel based on the true story of an escaped slave and the tragic consequences when a posse comes to reclaim her. The author won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, and in 2006 The New York Times named "Beloved" "the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years."
She wins the 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom:
In his personal remarks during the ceremony, President Obama said of Morrison's work, “I remember... Read More →
Watch Jose Antonio Vargas’ Emotional Senate Testimony
In 2011, in the midst of a distinguished career as a journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas revealed that he was living in the United States as an undocumented resident. It was a secret he felt he could keep no longer and against the advice of several immigration lawyers, he wrote a moving essay in The New York Times magazine on his life without permanent U.S. citizenship:
It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of... Read More →
VIDEO: Junot Diaz Speaks On The Importance Of Libraries
As the U.S. economy continues to crawl toward recovery, more and more people find themselves at the library. Filled with resources, computers, books and programs, the local library is often one of the only places people can go to get their information needs met, and unlike most online sources, there are real live people there to offer assistance.
Writers tend to be very vocal champions for libraries, particularly these days as funding is cut while demand is highest. Earlier this year, during an author visit to his local library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Junot Diaz spoke for a few minutes on the importance of libraries, particularly as it relates to his success as an author. "I can directly attribute who I am as a writer, an artist, as a thinker..from my early, early experiences in my... Read More →
What History Books Didn’t Teach You About Rosa Parks
[caption id="attachment_3669" align="aligncenter" width="335"] Source: Biography.com[/caption]
Most children learn about Rosa Parks' contribution to the Civil Rights Movement thusly: She boarded a bus, refused to move to the back of the bus when a white passenger got on board, and was promptly arrested, kicking off the Montgomery bus boycott. Lasting roughly 13 months, the Montgomery bus boycott lead to an official Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on public transportation unconstitutional.
While that did indeed happen, what is often overlooked is Rosa Parks' earlier involvement with the civil rights movement. She was a member of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and even served as secretary for NAACP President E.D. Nixon. In honor of what would have been her 100th birthday this... Read More →
