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Ana Raquel Minian in conversation with Irma Herrera discussing Minian's, "In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States," published by Viking.

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/new-nonfiction-in-hardcover/in-the-shadow-of-liberty-immigrant-det/

In 2018, many Americans watched in horror as children were torn from their parents at the US-Mexico border under Trump’s “family separation” policy. But as historian Ana Raquel Minian reveals in "In the Shadow of Liberty," this was only the latest chapter in a saga tracing back to the 1800s—one in which immigrants to the United States have been held without recourse to their constitutional rights. Braiding together the vivid stories of four migrants seeking to escape the turmoil of their homelands for the promise of America, "In the Shadow of Liberty" gives this history a human face, telling the dramatic story of a Central American asylum seeker, a Cuban exile, a European war bride, & a Chinese refugee.


As we travel alongside these indelible characters, "In the Shadow of Liberty" explores how sites of rightlessness have evolved, & what their existence has meant for our body politic. Though these “black sites” exist out of view for the average American, their reach extends into all of our lives: the explosive growth of the for-profit prison industry traces its origins to the immigrant detention system, as does the emergence of Guantanamo & the gradual unraveling of the right to bail & the presumption of innocence. Through these narratives, we see how the changing political climate surrounding immigration has played out in individual lives, & at what cost. But as these stories demonstrate, it doesn’t have to be like this, & a better way might be possible.

Ana Raquel Minian is a professor of history at Stanford University & the author of the award-winning book "Undocumented Lives," published by Harvard University Press in 2018. A recipient of the Andrew Carnegie fellowship, their writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, & Foreign Affairs, among other outlets. Originally from Mexico City, they now live with their partner in the Bay Area.

Irma Herrera is a writer, solo performer, & former lawyer based in the Bay Area. Her play "Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?" explores what it means to be American by weaving personal stories, humor, & historical events.

Originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

City Lights, ALTA Journal, & Heyday Books celebrate the publication of "The Forgetters: Stories" by Greg Sarris (Heyday Books).

Purchase books by Greg Sarris here: https://citylights.com/?search_type=author&s=Greg+Sarris

Celebrated storyteller & tribal leader Greg Sarris offers a contemplative & enchanting story cycle in "The Forgetters," a collection that blends into an unsuspected harmony shimmering with waking life, human & animal forms, & eras bygone & still-to-come. Borrowing from the cadence of Native American creation stories & the enchantment of magical realism, these tales combine to reveal the foibles & folly that beset us & the lessons that recall us to ourselves & the world.

"The Forgetters" excavates multilayered tales of California’s Indigenous exiles, camp workers, shapeshifters, & medicine people as they interweave with the paths of settlers, migrants, & other wayfarers across the arc of recent centuries & beyond. Narrated by the enigmatic crow sisters, Question Woman & Answer Woman, this collection returns to Sonoma Mountain & traverses the homelands of the Coast Miwok & Southern Pomo. Rooted in today’s Marin & Sonoma counties, these transporting tales glimmer with an intimate connection to place & past—from ancient mythic time when all the animals were people to a speculative future when the people return as environmental refugees to the mountain from which they came.

Greg Sarris is serving his sixteenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria & his first term as board chair for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. His publications include "Keeping Slug Woman Alive" (1993), "Grand Avenue" (1994, reissued 2015), "Watermelon Nights" (1998, reissued 2021), "How a Mountain Was Made" (2017, published by Heyday), and "Becoming Story" (2022, published by Heyday). Greg lives & works in Sonoma County. Visit his website at: greg-sarris.com

Blaise Zerega is Alta Journal’s editorial director. His journalism has appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio (deputy editor & part of founding team), WIRED (managing editor), the New Yorker, Forbes, & other publications. Additionally, he was the editor of Red Herring magazine, once the bible of Silicon Valley.

Originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

City Lights & Semiotext(e) celebrate the publication of "Stubble Archipelago" by Wayne Koestenbaum with a conversation between the author & Tausif Noor.

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/stubble-archipelago/

Wild new adventures in word-infatuated flânerie from a celebrated literary provocateur. This book of thirty-six poetic bulletins by the humiliation-advice-giver Wayne Koestenbaum will teach you how to cruise, dream, decode a crowded consciousness, find nuggets of satisfaction in unaccustomed corners, & sew a language glove roomy enough to contain materials gathered while meandering. Koestenbaum wrote many of these poems while walking around New York City. He’d jot down phrases in a notebook or dictate them into his phone. At home, he’d incorporate these fragmented gleanings into overflowing quasi sonnets. Thus each poem functions as a coded diary entry, including specific references to sidewalk events & peripatetic perceptions. Flirting, remembering, eavesdropping, gazing, squeezing, sequestering: Koestenbaum invents a novel way to cram dirty liberty into the tight yet commodious space of the sonnet, a fourteen-lined cruise ship that contains ample suites for behavior modification, libidinal experiment, aura-filled memory orgies, psychedelic Bildungsromane, lap dissolves, archival plunges, & other mental saunterings that conjure the unlikely marriage of Kenneth Anger & Marianne Moore. Carnal pudding, anyone? These engorged lyrics don’t rhyme; & though each builds on a carapace of fourteen lines, many of the lines spawn additional, indented tributaries, like hoop earrings dangling from the stanzas’ lobes. Koestenbaum’s poems are comic, ribald, compressed, symphonic. They take liberties with ordinary language, & open up new pockets for sensation in the sorrowing overcoat of the “now.” Stubble—a libidinal detail—matters when you’re stranded on the archipelago of your most unsanctioned yet tenaciously harbored impulses.

Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, novelist, artist, performer—has published nineteen books, including "The Queen’s Throat," a groundbreaking study of sexuality & the human voice which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. Additional books to his credit include: "Camp Marmalade," "Notes on Glaze," "The Pink Trance Notebooks," "My 1980s & Other Essays," "Hotel Theory," "The Anatomy of Harpo Marx," "Humiliation," "Jackie Under My Skin," & "The Cheerful Scapegoat." His essays & poems have been widely published in periodicals & anthologies, including "The Best American Poetry," "The Best American Essays," The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, London Review of Books, The Believer, The Iowa Review, Cabinet, and Artforum. Formerly an Associate Professor of English at Yale & a Visiting Professor in the Yale School of Art’s painting department, he is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, & Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Tausif Noor is a critic, curator, & PhD student in global modern art history at the University of California, Berkeley. His writing & essays have appeared in publications such as Artforum, the Poetry Project Newsletter, the New York Review of Books, & the New Yorker, as well as in various exhibition catalogues, artist books, & edited volumes. He lives in Oakland, CA.

Originally broadcast via Zoom on Monday, March 25, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

Judith Butler discusses their new book "Who’s Afraid of Gender?" published by Farrar Straus Giroux. Named a "Most Anticipated Book of 2024" by Time, Elle, Kirkus, Literary Hub, The Millions, & Electric Literature.

Purchase book here: https://citylights.com/whos-afraid-of-gender/

Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book "Gender Trouble" redefined how we think about gender & sexuality, confronts the attacks on “gender” that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti-gender ideology movements” that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization—& even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual & gender violence, & strip trans & queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.

The aim of "Who’s Afraid of Gender?" is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, & transexclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects & displaces anxieties & fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of “critical race theory” & xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, & leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation.

An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, "Who’s Afraid of Gender?" is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements & to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom & solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless.

Judith Butler is the author of several books including "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity," "Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'," "The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection, Excitable Speech, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly," & "The Force of Non-Violence." In addition to numerous academic honors & publications, Butler has published editorials & reviews in The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Nation, Time Magazine, the London Review of Books, & in a wide range of journals, newspapers, radio & podcast programs throughout Europe, Latin America, Central & South Asia, & South Africa. They live in Berkeley.

Maggie Nelson is the author of several acclaimed books of poetry & prose, including "Like Love: Essays and Conversations" (2024), the national bestseller "On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint" (2021), National Book Critics Circle Award winner and international bestseller "The Argonauts" (2015), "The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning" (2011), "Bluets" (2009; named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years), "The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial" (2007), & "Women, the New York School, & Other True Abstractions" (2007), "Something Bright, Then Holes" (2007), & "Jane: A Murder" (2005; finalist, the PEN/ Martha Albrand Art of the Memoir). A recipient of a 2016 MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, she is currently a professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Thursday, March 28, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

Kit Schluter celebrates the publication of "Cartoons," (City Lights) & Garrett Caples celebrates the publication of "Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales!" (Wave Books).

Purchase "Cartoons:" https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/cartoons/
Purchase "Proses:" https://citylights.com/general-fiction/proses-incomparable-parables-fabulous/

About "Cartoons:"
Set in the uncanny valley between Bugs Bunny & Franz Kafka, "Cartoons" is an explosive series of outrageous, absurdist tales. "Cartoons" proposes itself as a genre of imaginary writing in opposition to the realism of most contemporary U.S. fiction, aligning itself with the French symbolism & Latin American fabulism its author is known to translate. A giant cricket with a tiny Kit Schluter in a jar, an umbrella who confuses the words porpoise and purpose in its quest for self-fulfillment, a pair of slugs go on a bender, these are just a few denizens of its pages, suffused with a fairy tale-like animism. A microwave oven decries microaggressions. A beer bottle is filled with regret. An escalator mechanic’s shoe conceals a terrible secret.

Kit Schluter’s recent work has appeared in Boston Review, BOMB, & Brooklyn Rail. He is author of the poetry collection "Pierrot’s Fingernails" (Canarium Books) as well as numerous chapbooks & artist editions of poems & stories. Schluter is included in the latest edition of "Best American Experimental Writing" (Wesleyan UP, 2020), edited by Carmen Maria Machado, Joyelle McSweeney, Jesse Damiani & Seth Abramson. He has translated widely from French & Spanish, including works by Rafael Bernal (New Directions), Marcel Schwob (Wakefield Press), & Olivia Tapiero (Nightboat Books). He recently illustrated Sebastian Castillo’s novel "SALMON." Kit coordinates production & design for Nightboat Books and lives in Mexico City.

About "Proses:"
In the grand tradition of poet’s fiction, "Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales!" is a collection of nine phantasmagorical stories by poet & City Lights editor, Garrett Caples.
Turning its back on the ethos of traditional narrative, "Proses" draws on Marcel Schwob, magical realism, & speculative fiction for inspiration, projecting worlds dominated by dream logic & impossible dimensions. Spectral nuns, xenobots, explosive phraseology, & even Ringo Starr are some of the unexpected dilemmas confronting the various protagonists. Poets such as Andrew Joron, Kit Schluter, & Claude Grind make cameo appearances. While each story is a standalone, the collection amounts to an intricate whole, as themes, objects, & characters recur, encouraging readers to enjoy the book sequentially. Regardless of how it's enjoyed, "Proses" is both a satire of the world of contemporary poetry & a celebration of that world’s fantastic, infinite imagination.

Garrett Caples is the author of "Lovers of Today" (Wave Books, 2021), "Power Ballads" (Wave Books, 2016), "Complications" (2007), & "The Garrett Caples Reader" (1999), a collection of outtakes, "The Rise & Fall of Johnny Volume" (2020), & a bilingual selection, "Noches Apátridas" (Unstated Nights, 2019). He’s also written a book of essays, "Retrievals" (2014), & a pamphlet, "Quintessence of the Minor" (2010). He’s the editor of Philip Lamantia’s "Preserving Fire: Selected Prose" (2018), Samuel Greenberg’s "Poems from the Greenberg MSS" (2019), & Michael McClure’s "Mule Kick Blues and Last Poems" (2021), as well as the co-editor of "The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia" (2013), "Particulars of Place" (2015) by Richard O. Moore, "Incidents of Travel in Poetry: New and Selected Poems" (2016) by Frank Lima, & "Arcana: A Stephen Jonas Reader" (2019). He is an editor at City Lights Books, where he curates the Spotlight Poetry Series.

Originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Thursday, May 22, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundat

Celebrate Gil Cuadros with Kevin Martin, Rafael Pérez-Torres, & Amy Scholder. Opening by Greyson Wright & readings by Joseph Cassara & Flavia Elisa Mora.

City Lights & the SF LGBT Center celebrate the publication of
"My Body Is Paper: Stories and Poems" by Gil Cuadros, edited by Pablo Alvarez, Kevin Martin, Rafael Pérez-Torres, & Terry Wolverton, foreword by Justin Torres. Published by City Lights Books.

Purchase "My Body Is Paper" here: https://citylights.com/my-body-is-paper-stories-poems/
Purchase "City of God" here: https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/city-of-god/

Since "City of God" was published by City Lights 30 years ago, it has become an unlikely classic (an “essential book of Los Angeles” according to the LA Times). The book has touched those who find in his work a singular evocation of Chicanx life in Los Angeles around the time of the AIDS epidemic, which took his life in 1996. Little did we know, Cuadros continued writing exuberant works in the period between his one published book & his untimely death at 34. This recently discovered treasure, "My Body Is Paper," is a stunning portrait of sex, family, religion, culture of origin, & the betrayals of the body. Tender & blistering, erotic & spiritual, Cuadros dives into these complexities which we grapple with today, showing us how to survive these times & beyond.

Gil Cuadros (1962–1996) was a groundbreaking gay Latino writer whose work explored the intersections of sexuality, race, & spirituality. Diagnosed with HIV in 1987, Cuadros channeled his experiences into "City of God," capturing the raw emotions of living with a life-threatening illness. His lyrical intensity & unflinching honesty shined a light on marginalized communities & familial expectations. "City of God" has gone on to become a classic of Chicanx literature.

Kevin J. Martin is the executor of the Estate of Gil Cuadros, & a longtime copyeditor & writer. He serves as Senior Writer & Associate Editor for MagellanTV, where he writes on various topics related to art & culture.

Rafael Pérez-Torres is professor of English & Gender Studies at UCLA & author of "Movements in Chicano Poetry and Critical Mestizaje," co-author of "Memories of an East L.A. Outlaw," & co-editor of "The Chicano Studies Reader."

Amy Scholder is a literary editor & documentary filmmaker known for amplifying the stories of marginalized artists & activists. Amy began her career as an editor at City Lights. She has since served as US Publisher to Verso Books, later joining 7 Stories Press as Editor & Chief. In 2008, Scholder left 7 Stories to become the executive editor of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Scholder was approached by director Pratibha Parmar & producer Shaheen Haq to help finish their hybrid documentary feature, "My Name Is Andrea," about Andrea Dworkin. She became an executive producer of the film, which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.

Joseph Cassara is the author of "The House of Impossible Beauties" (Ecco), winner of the 2019 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction & finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. A graduate of Columbia University & the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he currently serves as the George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

Flavia Elisa Mora is a queer, Mexican migrant artist, activist, & community organizer raised in occupied Ramaytush Ohlone land, in La Mission. Her main two foci are muralismo & Flor y Canto poesía. Flavia’s work delves into the exploration of her identity, relationships, migration story, family & community history. She is a published writer, performs poetry throughout the Bay, & is one of the lead artists for the mural "Alto al Fuego en la Misión," located on 24th and Capp, SF.

Event originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Thursday, May 30, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. cityligh