Featured at MI Programs

Collection of folk tales from around the world set in and around the sea.

"Named for a part of the city where bribes bought police the highest-grade beef, San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood remains an island of primarily low-income, ethnically diverse residents in a city of ever increasing wealth. How has it survived? Randy Shaw searches for answers in this powerful account of the Tenderloin from its post-quake rebuilding in 1907 through today. The Tenderloin fought back against the establishment time and time again. And often won. Shaw shows how those outside the mainstream - independent working women, gay men, 'screaming queens' activist SRO hotel tenants and many others - led these struggles. Once known for 'girls, gambling and graft,' the Tenderloin was also fertile ground for the Grateful Dead, Miles Davis, Dashiell Hammett and other cultural icons. The Tenderloin is the untold story of a neighborhood that persisted against all odds. It is a must read for everyone concerned about the future of urban neighborhoods"--Unedited summary from book cover.

"An award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee who has covered homelessness for decades and spent extensive time on the streets for his reporting, Fagan experienced it himself as a young man and brings a deep understanding to the crisis. He introduces us to Rita and Tyson, telling the deeply moving story of two unhoused people rescued by their families with the help of Fagan's reporting, and their struggle to pull themselves out of homelessness and addiction, ending with both enormous tragedy and triumph. But [this book] is not just a story of individuals experiencing homelessness--it is also a compelling look at the link between homelessness and addiction, and [a] commentary on housing and equality"--

"Beginning with an essay about a three-hundred-year-old violin and what it can tell us about forests, abundance, and climate, and ending with on about a prisoner dreaming of seeing the ocean, No Straight Road Takes You There deftly bridges the political and the literary, offering unique insights, nuanced understanding, and inspiration for the challenging work ahead. In her latest essay collection, the award-winning author explores climate change, feminism, democracy, hope, and power and its abuse. Throughout she asks us to heed the stories we tell or have been told, and the ways those stories can be, or should be changed. Solnit offers a reappraisal of the value of indirect consequences, an embrace of unpredictability, slowness, and imperfection in the politics of how to change the world"--

"Five Days at Memorial meets Into the Raging Sea with this harrowing and moving true story of a devastating shipwreck during the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. On October 28, 2015, a boat meant for only a few dozen passengers capsized off the coast of the Greek island of Lesvos. Hundreds of refugees, forced in desperation onto the overloaded boat manned by armed smugglers, were tossed into a roiling sea. The resulting loss of life, the largest in a single day during the crisis in the Aegean, shocked the world. Now, after nearly a decade of research, interviews, and investigation, reporter Jeanne Carstensen has captured every detail of the dramatic twenty-four hours. This includes the recollections of the refugees' lives before they left their homes and a full account of the courageous rescue efforts of the Greek islanders and volunteers rushing to help, even as their government and the EU failed to act. In this remarkable narrative feat, Carstensen brilliantly showcases the extraordinary heroism of ordinary people in extreme circumstances. In a world where forced migration is on the rise, A Greek Tragedy challenges us to confront our collective humanity. It's an unforgettable testament of our times and a compassionate depiction of the lengths to which a person will go to save another human being."--

A groundbreaking cultural history of 1960s New York, from the legendary writer on art and filmLike Paris in the 1920s, New York City in the 1960s was a cauldron of avant-garde ferment and artistic innovation. Boundaries were transgressed and new forms created. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and the alternative press, Everything Is Now chronƯicles this collective drama as it was played out in coffeehouses, bars, lofts, storefront theaters, and, ultimately, the streets.The principals here are penniless filmmakƯers, jazz musicians, and performing poets, as well as less classifiable artists. Most were outsiders at the time. They include Amiri Baraka, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Carolee Schneemann, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and many more. Some were associƯated with specific movements (Avant Rock, Destruction Art, Fluxus, Free Jazz, Guerrilla Theater, Happenings, Mimeographed Zines, Pop Art, Protest-Folk, Ridiculous Theater, Stand-Up Poetry, Underground Comix, and Underground Movies). But there were also movements of one. Their art, rooted in the detritus and excitement of urban life, was taboo-breaking and confrontational.As J. Hoberman shows in this riveting hisƯtory, these subcultures coalesced into a counterculture that changed the city, the country, and the world.

"In 1942 newlyweds Itaru and Shizuko Ina were settling into married life when the United States government upended their world. They were forcibly removed from their home and incarcerated in wartime American concentration camps solely on account of their Japanese ancestry. When the Inas, under duress, renounced their American citizenship, the War Department branded them enemy aliens and scattered their family across the U.S. interior. Born to Itaru and Shizuko during their imprisonment, psychotherapist and activist Satsuki Ina weaves their story together in this moving mosaic. Through diary entries, photographs, clandestine letters, and heart-wrenching haiku, she reveals how this intrepid young couple navigated life, love, loss, and loyalty tests in the welter of World War II-era hysteria. The Poet and the Silk Girl illustrates through one family's saga the generational struggle of Japanese Americans who resisted racist oppression, fought for the restoration of their rights, and clung to their full humanity in the face of adversity. With psychological insight, Ina excavates the unmentionable, recovering a chronicle of resilience amidst one of the severest blows to American civil liberties. As she traces the legacies of trauma, she connects her family's ordeal to modern-day mass incarceration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Lyrical and gripping, this cautionary tale implores us to prevent the repetition of atrocity, pairing healing and protest with galvanizing power."--

"Linda's life may appear drab to those around her: She makes $20 an hour as a content moderator, flagging comments that violate a tech conglomerate's terms and conditions. Every night, she returns to the windowless room she rents in a garage on the outskirts of San Francisco. But once a month, she indulges her true passion: taking the AirTrain to SFO for a clandestine meeting on the cheapest flight out that night. Linda isn't interested in pilots, though. She has a thing for planes; their intelligent windscreens, comely slats, and rumbling turbulence make her feel a way that no man ever could. In fact, she desperately believes her destiny is to marry one by uniting their souls for eternity in what the rest of us may vulgarly refer to as a plane crash-the fatal tailspin caused by the plane's uncontrollable desire for her. Linda's unusual proclivities distance her from the rest of humanity, so she's surprised and pleased when her charismatic work friend, Karina, invites her to a quarterly Vision Board Brunch. She wants to hasten her romantic fate through manifestation, but as her vision boards start coming true a bit too literally, Linda must choose between being her authentic self or abandoning her destiny for a more "normal" life."--