Tag Archives: oppression

Finding Hope in Dark Times

If you need to poem to give you hope as Donald Trump tries to blow up the world order, check out Muriel Rukeyser’s “I lived in the first century of world wars.”

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The World’s One Hope: Compassion

Bertolt Brecht’s “”The World One Hope” addresses the problem of growing callousness but then points to how we can break through to compassion.

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How to Analyze Fantasy Projections

What fantasy means in 15 simple steps.

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Fight the Power, Check Out a Book

Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night is an unusual combination of fact and reflection, probing the nature and meaning of libraries.

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The Church and the Chimney-Sweep’s Cry

In his August 29 Washington Mall speech, rightwing television commentator Glenn Beck attacked (among other things) the notion that Christianity should be concerned with issues of social justice. He accused Barack Obama and liberation theology of distorting Jesus’s message. For the President, Beck said, it’s all about victims and victimhood; oppressors and the oppressed; reparations, […]

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Reviewing Lolita in Tehran

  Yesterday’s mention of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books gave me an excuse to go back and reread that marvelous book. The work embodies the central premise of this website: that literature can come to our aid when we need it most, helping us negotiate even the most difficult of […]

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