So I'm going to try to post the title and description of a book and the link to a radio story that I enjoy or find particularly insightful each week (or more often perhaps... but I don't wanna get too ambitious)
For more info see meshamaren.blogspot.com
Radio Show
"Polk Street Stories" by Joey Plaster http://transom.org/?p=9626
Joey Plaster is an oral historian focusing on queer history in the Bay area. He spent over a year in 2008 and 2009, gathering the stories of the Polk Street neighborhood—on the street and alleyways, in the bars and churches, in apartments and shelters, in the missions and the clubs. Joey says his motivation was, in part, to reclaim a part of queer history: “The Polk Street Community predates the modern gay rights movement and remains a visible manifestation of the stereotypes the movement has worked to scrub clean over the past 40 years, that is: queer people as mentally ill, criminal, licentious, doomed to lonely lives. Instead of repudiating this history, I want to embrace and learn from it.”
BookComing Through Slaughter by Michael OndaatjeAn incredible fictional journey through turn of the century New Orleans, following such real life characters as early jazz musician Buddy Bolden and photographer E.J. Bellocq, wavering between the poetic dreamland of Bolden's slipping sanity and the hard facts of history Ondaatje weaves an astounding narrative.a review: http://www.powells.com/biblio/0679767851
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