#5questions

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Dantiel W. Moniz, Author of Milk Blood Heat

Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminars, and a Tin House Scholarship. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, the Yale Review, Joyland, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. Milk Blood Heat is her first book. She lives in Northeast Florida.

Dantiel W. Moniz is in conversation with C Pam Zhang to celebrate her new novel Milk Blood Heat (published by Grove Atlantic) in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Thursday, February 4th

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Where are you writing to us from?

Jacksonville, FL

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?

Roller skating; re-watching atmospheric TV Series like Mad Men and Sharp Objects; my husband (IRL) and friends (virtually).

What are 3 books you always recommend to people?

I don’t have a specific three, it’s always changing. Right now: We the Animals by Justin Torres, Luster by Raven Leilani, and Severance by Ling Ma.

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?

In general: Janet Fitch, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Sally Mann. For this collection: Antonya Nelson, Jeffrey Eugenides, Julie Orringer, Amy Bloom.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

Definitely Jacksonville, because we don’t have enough. And names! I’m so bad at it. Maybe The Hot Ticket, but we’d run the A/C all day long. We’d have a special section for homegrown authors and Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton would be front and center.

[cambridgefamily]

[quietgiantdesign]

Ian S. Young Presents “X” / The Five Questions of the Unknown. (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN & WHY). 2018 solo art exhibit in Downtown San Jose. #who #what #when #where #why #5questions #theunknown #solo #artexhibit #art #exhibit #downtown #sanjose #paintings #artwork #abstractart #realism #artdirection #branding #logo #logoart #design #artdesign #quietgiantdesign

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Sesshu Foster, Co-Author of ELADATL

Sesshu Foster taught composition and literature in East L.A. for over 20 years, and at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work is published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. His most book recent is ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines, co-authored with Arturo Ernesto Romo and published by City Lights. His other books include City of the Future, World Ball Notebook, and Atomik Aztex.

Sesshu and Arturo are in conversation with Carribean Fragoza celebrating the book launch of ELADATL in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Tuesday, April 27

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Where are you writing to us from?

I’m writing you from Tongva land, facing east over the San Gabriel Valley, east of the L.A. River.

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?

Same things as always—my family, friends, and people. Poetry and books. I’m grateful for all you folks doing what you do best. I only do good if other people are doing well. And we’re always walking and hiking. Yesterday we hiked to Owen Brown’s gravesite on a hilltop in the San Gabriel Mountains. Owen Brown, son of John Brown, was one of the only survivors of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. He and his brother Jason kept a low profile after the Civil War as sheepherders, living in a mountain cabin. When he died in Pasadena in 1889, two thousand people attended his funeral. His tombstone was stolen once, recovered and is temporarily replaced by peeling plywood signs. But his bones are there.

What are 3 books you always recommend to people?

One size doesn’t fit all. For four year olds and their parents, I might recommend Niño Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales. For hungry intellectuals and young writers, I could recommend Compression & Purity by Will Alexander. For people who don’t know them, what about America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan, or the Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman?

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?

I like the University of California edition of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The nautical illustrations by Barry Moser (page 74 includes a diagram of sections of a whaling ship, page 106 presents a “windlass turned by handspikes” for the reader who lacks a mental image of a windlass, page 147 depicts porpoises referred to in the text, etc.) which are helpful to the 21st century landlocked reader. Some features of ELADATL are analogous to these. Of course, airships are analogous to sailing ships, which are themselves also metaphorical.

Of course, the main influence on ELADATL is the work of my collaborator, artist Arturo Ernesto Romo, whose ideas of folding (prismatic or origami-like), resistance or interruption, and the active participation of the viewer (or, in this case the reader) format the structure of this narrative. Also present, folded into and prismatically reflecting the narrative are images and art work by Arturo Romo. Arturo told me that his illustrations that grace each chapter were influenced by Hugo Gellert, and I know the collaborative practice of public performances Arturo and I did—-and our community-based aesthetics, which is refracted in ELADATL—-have been influenced by the Chicano collective Asco (Harry Gamboa, Gronk Nicandro, Patssi Valdez, Willie Herrón and others). As well as by the muralists of East L.A. and other artists of the Chicano movement.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

You know, I don’t want to touch this question. I’m already found mostly inside books I’ve written. I’d be frightened of having my own bookstore, I might wander into the stacks of my own bookstore and never be seen again. Even though Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Larry McMurtry did it! Recently I was in Bellingham, Washington state, and found the Alternative Library, co-founded 14 years ago as a free anarchist lending library, by “Future” (he told me his name was, as he welcomed a new volunteer starting her first day). Santa Ana writer Sarah Rafael Garcia stocks several “Libromobile” book carts around Orange County in Southern California, which gives me the desire to take that idea on the road, with a step van full of books I’d drive to places like the Coachella Valley, or anywhere where people—especially kids—need books. There’s a lot of book deserts. I don’t know what I’d call it. I’d call it all kinds of names if it broke down and didn’t make it to the next place. The best seller? Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi? Niño Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales? Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown? Make them readers and let the kids decide.

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Cynthia Kaufman, Author of  The Sea Is Rising and So Are We

Cynthia Kaufman is the director of the Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action, where she also teaches community organizing and philosophy. The author of Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope (Lexington Books, 2012), she is a lifelong social change activist, having worked on issues such as tenants' rights, police abuse, union organizing, international politics, and most recently climate change.

Cynthia Kaufman is in conversation with Francesca Caparas discussing her new book The Sea Is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook (PM Press) in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Tuesday, May 25, 2021.

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Where are you writing to us from?

I am writing from Pacifica, California; a 30-minute drive South of City Light Books.

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?

I've been doing a lot of hiking and writing.

What are 3 books you always recommend to people?

Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed; Tony Morrison's Beloved; James Baldwin's Collected Essays.

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?

This book has been influenced by the climate justice movement, especially the youth wing of the movement. This book draws on Robert Bullard, J.K. Gibson-Graham, adrienne maree brown, Kate Raworth, and Bill McKibben. I have been very influenced in general by Freire, Baldwin, Gramsci, Marx, and Nietzsche.  

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

All the places I love already have great bookstores!

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Kim Addonizio, Author of Now We’re Getting Somewhere

Kim Addonizio is the author of eight poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry: The Poet's Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. Her poetry collection Tell Me was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her 2016 collection, Mortal Trash, won the Paterson Poetry Prize. Addonizio's awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other honors. She lives in Oakland, California.

Kim Addonizio is joined by Brittany Perham, Peter Kline, and Tracey Knapp to discuss the launch of her new collection Now We’re Getting Somewhere: Poems (published by Norton) in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Tuesday, March 16th

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Where are you writing to us from?

I’m hunkered down here in the Oakland hills with a couple of lovely cats. I haven’t been to San Francisco for nearly a year—is it still even there? I’m glad City Lights is making it through in some way and will hopefully be stronger than ever on the other side of this. You guys are a beacon and an icon.

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?

Um…edibles? I generally tend to see reality as something to escape from. Now more than ever. So, the usual: binge-baking, binge-watching, binge-cringing at the political antics of the motherfuckers who’ve spent the last four years running the democratic experiment into the ground.

What are 3 books you always recommend to people?

Here are three I’ve recommended to friends recently: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo—the subtitle pretty much sums it up: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. I read it several years ago and it just blew me away—the lives of those people and the sympathy with which she renders them. Nonfiction, but it reads like a novel. I’ve never forgotten it. Lately I’m recommending the one I’m reading now, Martha Gellhorn’s The Face of War. She’s a beautiful writer who possibly had her work overshadowed somewhat by being married to Hemingway for a time. She gives you such a sense of what it’s like for people in wartime, from the Spanish Civil War through WWII and Vietnam and a few other places—without any sense of pity, just clear-sighted observation. In “The War in Finland,” she writes, “The way people stay half-sane in war, I imagine, is to suspend a large part of their reasoning minds, lose most of their sensitivity, laugh when they get the smallest chance, and go a bit, but increasingly, crazy.” Third—Is it cheating to say I’m listening to this one? I love being read to—I became obsessed with Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Every night I disappear into the sixteenth century’s burnings, beheadings, and bling. I’m on the last one, The Mirror & the Light, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to recover from being ejected back into my own time. I’m thinking I’ll just start over with the first book, and by the time I’m through the second round, the listing ship of state will have hopefully been righted.

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?

It’s hard to answer this without naming every book I’ve read, every movie I’ve seen, every piece of art I’ve looked at and every kind of music I’ve listened to. I’m influenced by everything and everyone, but mostly I don’t consciously remember that stuff; it’s like my brain is doing its thing deep down in its little neural workshop and one day something surfaces. With this book, it often felt more as though I was channeling a messed-up, passionate and somehow bratty spirit who had a lot to say. I don’t know where she got it all from.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

That’s an easy one: Lola’s Tiny Bookshop. Right here in a little white bookcase in the room I write in. Lola is my five-year-old alter-ego (I guess that means I have two if you count whatever phantom wrote this book). She’s already opened Lola’s Tiny Café on the deck, Lola’s Tiny Cinema (living room TV) . . . This probably sounds unbearably precious so I’ll spare you her other designations (though I kind of like the top of the fridge, which has been rechristened the Golan Heights). The latest bestseller: that new poetry collection by Kim Addonizio.

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Daphne A. Brooks, Author of Liner Notes for the Revolution

Daphne A. Brooks is the author of Jeff Buckley's Grace and Bodies in Dissent, and winner of the Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American performance studies. A professor at Yale University, she has written liner notes to accompany the recordings of Aretha Franklin, Tammi Terrell, and Prince, as well as stories for the New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, and Pitchfork.

Daphne Brooks is in conversation with Ann Powers discussing her new book Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Wednesday, February 24

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Where are you writing to us from? I am writing to you from?

I am writing to you from New Haven, CT… but my heart, and I’m not kidding about this, is in San Francisco—and Berkeley and Oakland and Menlo Park/Palo Alto—my hometown turf!

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?

Baking, late-night television (Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon—watched in the 2AM hour), I May Destroy You (more episodes, please!), The Forty-Year-Old Version, the Childish Gambino record nobody listened to but me, the Fiona Apple record that everybody listened to early in the pandemic, Arlo Parks’ debut album, our beloved and beautiful young chocolate lab Gibson who, so incredibly sadly, we just lost . . . 

What are 3 books you always recommend to people?

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Toni Morrison, Jazz and/or A Mercy; Crime and Punishment (had to read it in the 6th grade)—plus one short story: James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues"

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?

- Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century; - Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century; - Ann Powers, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music; - Albert Murray, The Hero and the Blues & assorted essays; - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man & assorted essays; - Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals; - Toni Morrison, Jazz, Beloved, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination; - Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday; - Gayle Wald, Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe; - Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America; - Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, The Universal Machine, Black and Blur, Stolen Life

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, full coffee bar, turntables and listening booths, extensive newsstand, extensive music books section, BIPOC sections, critical gender studies and queer theory sections, performance space, public library/donations space, extensive children’s lit area. It’s called: Words In Stereo. Bestseller: that’s a tough one! Maybe some kind of a book that hasn’t been conjured up yet, a collaborative endeavor by Amanda Gorman and Greta Thunberg.

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Nicole Perlroth, Author of This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends

Nicole Perlroth covers cybersecurity and digital espionage for The New York Times. Her first book, This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends: The Cyber Weapons Arms Race, about the global cyber arms race, is new from Bloomsbury Publishing this month. A Bay Area native, Perlroth is a guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford University.

Nicole Perlroth is in conversation with David Sanger to discuss her new book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends in our City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Wednesday, February 10th

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Where are you writing to us from? 

My family’s cabin in the Sierras. I was born in the Bay Area and don't plan on ever leaving, but a burst pipe sent us scrambling to the mountains.

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic? 

My two-year-old. He has no clue we are living through a global pandemic. The other night, he commanded us to turn on “Yellow Submarine" and start dancing. We were exhausted, but that impromptu dance party was the perfect antidote to being cooped up for ten months. Highly recommend.

What are 3 books you always recommend to people? 

The Godfather by Mario Puzo. (I read it every year). Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder and Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis. I'm fascinated by people who go to extremes to seek justice. And In very different ways, that is what each of those three books is about.  

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically? 

Nora Ephron. I simply love how disarming and authentic she was. It was her super power. There's so much pressure to be objective and neutral that, especially for female journalists, it can have the effect of wiping away your personality quirks. Nora didn't let it. I don't either. And it was disarming voices like hers that helped me tell the story of the cyber arms market in the most accessible way possible. 

I also found myself flipping through Flash Boys all the time. It was a useful template in that it was a character-driven account of a highly technical subject— high-speed trading—that most people had heard of, but never understood just how screwed they were getting. That, in a nutshell, is my book. We've all heard of cybersecurity and data breaches but we never knew how screwed we were getting, in many cases by our own government. 

As for art! I happened upon the MashUp exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery early on in the process of writing this book. I was in Vancouver for a hacking conference and ended up spending an entire day at the exhibit. It featured Picasso and Tarantino and Jamaican dub music and there was an entire room dedicated to David Byrne's collaboration with Brian Eno, and I walked out of that exhibit thinking, "They were all hackers." They took art and film and music that had traditionally functioned one way and mashed it up and repurposed it for an entirely different genre or purpose, which is essentially the definition of hacking. The word "hacker" has always had a negative connotation, but really hackers are just people who take a system and use it in a way that it was never designed to be used. What I saw that day really helped inform the chapters I wrote about the early days of hacking.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be? 

It would be high up on a mountain peak in the Swiss Alps. It would be called “Piqued.” There would be fondue and blankets and a fire going at all times. Our bestsellers would be Into Thin Air, Hatchet, West with the Night and Call of the Wild. I have been transporting myself to that bookstore for most of COVID.