East Side Freedom Library

For this month's episode, fellow ESFL intern Linda Lor spoke with Sanjay Taythi, a community organizer, about his work surrounding the intergenerational Tibetan community in Minnesota, Black and Asian solidarity, and more. 

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Racial housing covenants have played a key role in shaping the racial segregation and other discrimination alive today in the Twin Cities. This episode examines the history of covenants, the role of the public and the private sector in this segregation, and the present-day effects. Maria Cisneros, founder of Just Deeds, also shared what it was like to find out her home had a racial covenant and explained Just Deeds mission and role in disavowing racial covenants. Still curious about covenants? Check out Mapping the Prejudice and Just Deeds!

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Curious about rent stabilization in St. Paul? Take a listen as we explain what rent stabilization is, how it started, and where it's going. We also spoke with Tram Hoang, former campaign manager for the Keep St. Paul Home campaign, to learn more about the behind the scenes of the rent stabilization campaign. 

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The Spirit Tree: Hazel Belvo and the Art of Nature Julie L’Enfant History Revealed Series Partnership with the Roseville Library, Ramsey County Historical Society, and the East Side Freedom Library  

Hazel Belvo has been an influential artist, art educator, and feminist leader for more than fifty years. Her prodigious output ranges from delicate drawings to monumental paintings exploring nature, spirituality, and the feminine psyche. She is best known for over four hundred works on the legendary Spirit Little Cedar Tree on the North Shore of Lake Superior whose ancient, twisted form embodies the endurance and majesty of nature.  In this talk Julie L’Enfant, author of the new book Hazel Belvo: A Matriarch of Art, will introduce Belvo’s eventful life and the many friendships and associations in the art world that fostered the evolution of her unique expressionist vision.  

Julie L’Enfant, former professor of art history at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, is the author of seven books, including The Gag Family: German-Bohemian Arts in America (2002), Pioneer Modernists: Minnesota’s First Generation of Women Artists (2011), both winners of Minnesota Book Awards, and Nicholas R. Brewer: His Art and Family (2018).  To purchase the book, see our partner, Subtext Books: Hazel Belvo: A Matriarch of Art by Julie L’Enfant (https://subtextbooks.com/item/oL2lSh-...)

View video here: https://youtu.be/3BhvPxrzXqc

The East Side Freedom Library invites you to Samora Machel: The Struggle  Against Colonialism, featuring Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman  authors of the new book, SAMORA MACHEL: A LIFE CUT SHORT, in  conversation with Rose Brewer and August Nimtz, Jr.  

Samora Machel (1933–1986), the son of small-town farmers, led his people  through a war against their Portuguese colonists and became the first  president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique. Machel’s military  successes against a colonial regime backed by South Africa, Rhodesia,  the United States, and its NATO allies enhanced his reputation as a  revolutionary hero to the oppressed people of Southern Africa. In 1986,  during the country’s civil war, Machel died in a plane crash under  circumstances that remain uncertain.  

Allen and Barbara Isaacman lived through many of these changes in  Mozambique and bring personal recollections together with archival  research and interviews with others who knew Machel or participated in  events of the revolutionary or post-revolutionary years. Allen is the  Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and  Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape in South  Africa. He is the author of seven books exploring African history.  Barbara Isaacman is a retired criminal defense attorney in Hennepin  County. She worked with the Mozambican Women’s Movement and taught at  the law faculty of the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane while living in  Mozambique in the late 1970s.  

Rose Brewer and August Nimtz, Jr., are models of scholar-activists. Dr.  Brewer is Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor in the  Department of African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota. She has won many teaching awards, has worked on curricular transformation, and has published widely in both academic and activist platforms. Dr. Nimtz is a Professor of Political Science and African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota. He has published widely in African American political thought, and he has been active in building bridges between local communities and Cuban activists.

View the video here: https://youtu.be/pp_6S5dV1fk

Sponsored by the Solidarity Committee of the Americas (SCOTA), a Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) committee in Minnesota, the Minnesota Cuba Committee, East Side Freedom Library,j Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) and others.  

Links posted during the event: U of MN-Cuba medical collaborations: https://www.sph.umn.edu/events-calend...Belly of the Beast video series: https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/ACERE: https://www.acere.orgSolidarity Committee of the Americas (SCOTA) email: [email protected] SCOTA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/solidarityco...Women Against Military Madness (WAAM): https://www.womenagainstmilitarymadne... 

After 20 months of pandemic restrictions, Cuba is reopening and preparing to ease travel restrictions to the island on November 15. Ambassador Torres Rivera and panelists discuss how Cuba is functioning today and, despite the punishing 60-year blockade by the United States, is battling Covid and climate change and continuing to work toward the betterment of its people.  

Minnesotans have long been interested in Cuba, with many having traveled there. They have also proposed and passed governmental resolutions, engaged in medical collaboration and assistance, traded agricultural goods and knowledge, and have reached out in many other ways. This meeting was an opportunity to build on those efforts.  

Panelists include:  -Nachito Herrera, Cuban-American and renowned musician who survived Covid with the help of Cuban and University of Minnesota doctors -Kevin Paap, President, Minnesota Farm Bureau -Senator Sandy Pappas, author of legislative resolutions opposing the blockade, has led several legislative delegations to Cuba -Dr. Teddie Potter, University of Minnesota School of Nursing -Dr. John Oswald, Adjunct Professor, University of Minnesota School of Public Health -Ofunshi Raudemar ACT DDHH, Cuban-American Babalawo from the Yoruba religious tradition

Video: https://youtu.be/IxKTEguxogk

The East Side Freedom Library and Teamsters Local 320 invite you to a  panel discussion, Unsung Heroes of Justice: Six Public Defenders and  Staff Discuss Their Work.  

Minnesota Public Defenders are court-appointed attorneys for indigent  citizens who cannot afford access to justice. Public defense is a  mandated service enshrined by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision,  Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), in which the Court ruled that  the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires states to provide  attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own.  

Minnesota Public Defenders have been stretched to the max during the  COVID-19 pandemic with significant backlogs, unmanageable caseloads, and  unsafe working conditions. The Board of Public Defense is failing to  retain and reward its employees and this failure will have severe and  lasting repercussions for indigent clients.  Please join a panel discussion by six public defense employees who are  represented by Teamsters Local 320 and are in the midst of contract  negotiations, negotiations which will impact not only their lives but  also the lives of the women and men who depend on them for  representation.

View the video at https://youtu.be/ftcFNKcQIm8

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby is now in the public domain. This gives us  the opportunity to dig deeper and fuller into the cultural image of our  iconic literary figure.  

Join the East Side Freedom Library and literary curator Danny Klecko at  The University Club in welcoming AJ Odasso in conversation with Maryanne  Grossmann! We will also be joined by special guests Doug Green, Kasey  Payette, Klecko, Anthony Cebellos and emcee Clarence White. The queering of Gatsby takes form in the new novel, The Pursued and the  Pursuing by AJ Odasso. In their tale, Odasso explores what might have  been had it left Gatsby with another chance at happiness. Find it he  does, although not in the arms of Daisy Buchanan. As Gatsby travels the  world with Nick Carraway, his friend and narrator, he sheds wealth,  performance, and glamor in favor of honesty, intimacy, and love.  

A. J. Odasso’s poetry has appeared in a variety of publications,  including Sybil’s Garage, Mythic Delirium, Midnight Echo, Not One of Us,  Dreams & Nightmares, Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Stone Telling,  Farrago’s Wainscot, Liminality, Battersea Review, Barking Sycamores,  and New England Review of Books. A.J.’s debut collection, Lost Books  (Flipped Eye Publishing), was nominated for the 2010 London New Poetry  Award and was also a finalist for the 2010–11 People’s Book Prize. Her  second collection with Flipped Eye, The Dishonesty of Dreams, was  released in 2014; their third collection, Things Being What They Are,  was shortlisted for the 2017 Sexton Prize. They hold an MFA in creative  writing from Boston University, and works in the Honors College at the  University of New Mexico. A.J. has served in the Poetry Department at  Strange Horizons since 2012. They live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

View the video here: https://youtu.be/PLBmwyW_jOk

SubText Books and East Side Freedom Library are pleased to present a  virtual event to celebrate the release of "Yellow Rain" by Mai Der Vang  (Graywolf Press) on Friday, October 1st at 7:00 PM. Mai Der Vang will be  in conversation with Kao Kalia Yang.  

About:  In this staggering work of documentary, poetry, and collage, Mai Der  Vang reopens a wrongdoing that deserves a new reckoning. As the United  States abandoned them at the end of its war in Vietnam, many Hmong  refugees recounted stories of a mysterious substance that fell from  planes during their escape from Laos starting in the mid-1970s. This  substance, known as “yellow rain,” caused severe illnesses and thousands  of deaths. These reports prompted an investigation into allegations  that a chemical biological weapon had been used against the Hmong in  breach of international treaties. A Cold War scandal erupted, wrapped in  partisan debate around chemical arms development versus control. And  then, to the world’s astonishment, American scientists argued that  yellow rain was the feces of honeybees defecating en masse—still held as  the widely accepted explanation. The truth of what happened to the  Hmong, to those who experienced and suffered yellow rain, has been  ignored and discredited.   

Integrating archival research and declassified documents, Yellow Rain  calls out the erasure of a history, the silencing of a people who at the  time lacked the capacity and resources to defend and represent  themselves. In poems that sing and lament, that contend and question,  Vang restores a vital narrative in danger of being lost, and brilliantly  explores what it means to have access to the truth and how marginalized  groups are often forbidden that access.   

Mai Der Vang is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’  Circle. Her poetry has appeared in the New Republic, Poetry, and the  Virginia Quarterly Review, and her essays have been published in the New  York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post. Her debut  collection, Afterland, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy  of American Poets. She lives in California.   

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer, teacher and public speaker.  Born in the refugee camps of Thailand to a family that escaped the  genocide of the Secret War in Laos, she came to America at the age six.  Yang holds degrees from Carleton College and Columbia University. Her  works of creative nonfiction include The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family  Memoir, The Song Poet, What God is Honored Here?: Writings on  Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Indigenous Women and Women of  Color, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang has also written  multiple children's books such as A Map Into the World, The Shared Room,  and The Most Beautiful Thing, Yang Warriors, and the forthcoming From  the Tops of the Trees. Her work has won numerous awards and recognition  including multiple Minnesota Book Awards, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor, an  ALA Notable Children's Book Award, Dayton's Literary Peace Prize, and a  PEN USA Award in Nonfiction.

View the video: https://youtu.be/Wu2-CoXNeH0

St. Paul: "An Urban Biography" by Bill Lindeke  

Author Bill Lindeke will share stories and research from his new book,  St. Paul: An Urban Biography, a concise history of St. Paul, featuring  stories that are familiar, surprising, and sure to change the way you  see Minnesota’s capital city.  

How did the city of St. Paul come to be where and what it is, and what  does that show us about the city today? Bill Lindeke provides intriguing  insights and helpful answers. He tells the stories of the Dakota  village forced to move across the Mississippi by a treaty—and why  whiskey sellers took over the site; the new community’s close ties to  Fort Snelling and Winnipeg; the steamboats and railroads that created a  booming city; the German immigrants who outnumbered the Irish but kept a  low profile when the United States went to war; the laborers who built  the domes over the state capitol and the Cathedral of St. Paul; the  gangsters and bootleggers who found refuge in the city; the strong  neighborhoods, shaped by streets built on footpaths and wagon  roads—until freeway construction changed so much; and the Hmong,  Mexican, East African, and Karen immigrants who continue to build the  city’s strong traditions of small businesses.  

This thoughtful investigation of place helps readers to understand the  city’s hidden stories, surrounding its residents in plain sight.  

Bill Lindeke is an urban geographer and writer who focuses on how our  environments shape our lives. He wrote MinnPost’s “Cityscapes” column  from 2014 to 2017, has written articles on local food and drink history  for City Pages and the Growler, and has taught urban geography at the  University of Minnesota and Metro State University. He writes a local  urban blog at Twin City Sidewalks and is a member of the Saint Paul  Planning Commission. He is the author of Minneapolis–Saint Paul: Then  and Now and the coauthor of Closing Time: Saloons, Taverns, Dives, and  Watering Holes of the Twin Cities.  

To purchase titles from the History Revealed series, or other books of  interest, see our partner, Subtext Books at https://subtextbooks.com/

To view the video: https://youtu.be/z2DiKCvLWfQ