Anne McPeak
Off the Shelves
By Theodore Hamm, Megan Marz, Richard Klin, and Anne McPeakOn May 4, 1886, Chicago’s anarchists and radical labor leaders gathered in Haymarket Square to protest ongoing police violence against the movement for the eight-hour workday. Although some leaflets in circulation at the event called "workingmen … to arms!!!," most of the speakers at the rally discouraged any resort to violence.
The Crimes We Commit
By Anne McPeakThe twelve stories in Dacia Maraini’s Darkness are documents of horrendous crimes: rape, forced prostitution, physical abuse, murder. Throughout, Maraini takes a dispassionate tone; there is very little sympathy for the characters, including Adele Sofia, the police commissioner who threads the stories together. This dispassionate style serves to remind us that in our daily lives there are terrible things happening every moment, as we buy a cup of coffee, wash the dishes, or talk to a friend on the phone— and for someone like Adele Sofia, this is nothing to get excited about.
Little Intimacies
By Anne McPeakI was sitting at the dinning room table reading The Plague. My parents and Madeleine all came in at once, like an intervention. "Nancy," my mother said, smiling at me kindly and pityingly. "Madeleine is going to a party." My mother had begun to repulse me lately. In a surprisingly obvious revelation, I’d realized two things about her. She was a blinker; and she could only talk about superficial things. God, she could go on and on about food.
