The Brooklyn Rail
Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture
APR 2008
Express
Campaign Notebook: Obama at Philadelphia
by Theodore HammExpress
Widely viewed on YouTube and much discussed across the political media, Barack Obama’s mid-March speech about the need for a national discussion of race indeed emanated from a historic place.
Dispatches from the Tibetan Front: Dharamsala, India
by Litia PertaExpress
A nearly vertical path cleaves to the side of a mountain in India, connecting the town of Dharamsala with the village of McLeod Ganj.
Dispatches from the Tibetan Front: On the March
by Lex PelgerExpress
Asked about what he thinks will happen when he peacefully tries crosses the border from India into Tibet, Losang Tsering said, “I think they (the Chinese soldiers) will shoot. I am not scared. I am ready to die for my country.”
The Church and Its Sins: Constantine’s Sword
by Williams ColeExpress
Directed by Oren Jacoby, the film is based on a nearly 800-page book by James Carroll titled Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews—and that subtitle is the main focus of the film.
Paying for War
by Jed LipinskiExpress
On March 18, a photo appeared on the New York Times website of a small white-haired woman in a purple sweatshirt named Ruth Benn, coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC), being forcibly removed from the IRS building in Washington, DC.
As Vets Testify — Democrats and Big Media are Nowhere to be Found
by Matthew HennessyExpress
Jon Turner’s anecdote was just one example of the many horrific stories told by over one hundred members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) at the group’s recent Winter Soldier event in DC.
Born in Africa: Farai Wonderful Bere
by Nadia DavidsExpress
I went to a party in New York City and met some girlz they were dancing free/They seemed to me on a dancing spree/One, two, I counted three, I said hey girlz can I join you too/One came to me, said how do you do, We did all moves that we could do/Then came the time for me to go: I said girl, I’m out/She’s like “Man, where you from, anywhere?”/I said girl, let’s dance, not talk; but, for the record I’m from Afrika.
Wasteland Dreaming
by Christian ParentiExpress
In the years bracketing 9/11, I was working on a book about the history of everyday surveillance and at the time suffered recurring dreams that were something like nightmares, but more fun. I was always on the run, chased by the state or some other omnipotent force that was never well-defined.
Man of the Village, Man of the World: Vincent Livelli and His Enduring Adventures
by Alan LockwoodExpress
From a teenage yen for hot rumba that led him from Harlem in the late 1930s to a career on the high seas, Vincent Livelli brims with rich experience.
Just Another American Dreamer
by Vincent RossmeierExpress
Dreams have consequences. The common American desire to recreate ourselves, if taken too far, can destroy the link between our identity and reality.
Seizing the Means of Production
by Michael BuschExpress
While much of the world’s attention in late 2001 was focused on the nascent War on Terror unfolding in Afghanistan, the Southern Cone of South America witnessed the financial disintegration of a regional juggernaut.
Hobsbawm’s Empire
by Leigh Kamping-CarderExpress
I first read the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm’s work in an undergraduate seminar.
Amis and Islam
by James ArnettExpress
Though it has been mostly overlooked in the American press, a firestorm among English literati has recently been brewing over inflammatory comments regarding Muslims that novelist Martin Amis made during an interview with The Times’ Ginny Dougary.
Don’t Hate the Nader, Hate the Game
by Charly WilderExpress
In December 1947, Alfred Gödel, a German logician who had fled Nazi Germany for Princeton, New Jersey at the outbreak of World War II, sat down to take his U.S. citizenship exam, accompanied by his good friend and official witness, Albert Einstein.
The Most Everything in the World
by Elizabeth CraneExpress
LAST NIGHT MY HUSBAND ASKED ME, If you lived on a desert island and could only bring three things, what would you bring, and I said, I’d bring pen and paper and you.
