Illustration: Ray Noland/CRO

For white Americans, consciousness of race has tended to arrive without quite so much freight — as a discovery that there are distinctions, sure, but that white is the norm, the default mode for humanity.”
—James Bennett, editor, The Atlantic

The best story written once Barack Obama became president appeared in the January/February 2009 special “State of The Union” issue of The Atlantic. The same issue from where the words above originated. The cover of that issue said it all: “The End Of White America?”

What made it the best wasn’t necessarily what Hua Hsu wrote (although he did ink a helluva piece), but it was the actuality that he brought to the forefront—the true fear white America was privately having behind what was happening right in front of them. It was the anxiety that existed inside of America that had been covertly floating around everyone’s head prior to, during and after the campaign that was responsible for putting Obama in the one place no one ever thought an “articulate” (VP Joe Biden’s word), “light-skinned African-American with no Negro dialect” (Sen. Harry Reid’s words) would ever be.

Once that Pandora’s “black” box was opened, it was just a matter of time before everyone jumped in to write about the state the country was in concerning race now that there was a black man in the White (man’s) House. Or to just use “race” as the backdrop to tell their stories.

A literary epidemic. “We Ain’t What We Used To Be: The Black Freedom Struggle From Emancipation To Obama,” by Stephen Tuck. “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age of Colorblindness,” by Michelle Alexander. “I’m Down: A Memoir,” by Mishna Wolff. “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race In The Age of Obama,” by Gwen Ifill. “Between Barack and A Hard Place: Racism and White Denial In The Age of Obama,” by Tim Wise. “What Obama Means… for Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future,” by Jabari Asim. Just to name several.

Now, two more books have entered the cipher. “Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Redemption” (Bantam), by Jerald Walker, and “Post Black: How A New Generation Is Redefining African-American Identity” (Lawrence Hill), by Ytasha Womack, both use race as the centerpiece to tell much bigger stories about their personal lives (and beliefs) and the existence of race in this country. Read the rest of this entry »

On November 5 Hyde Park’s 57th Street Books hosts a reading of literary and design journal Ninth Letter, a collaborative effort between Urbana-Champaign’s MFA Creative Writing Program and The School of Art & Design. Contributors include Seth Fried, whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s, and Chris Wiberg, previous assistant editor, who will each read their not-yet-published work appearing in the most recent issue of the award-winning journal. “I love to do live readings,” Wiberg says. “Writing can be such an isolated activity, so it’s a breath of fresh air to stand in a room and actually perform and connect with people.” “Attending a live reading is like viewing a play, almost,” says Jodee Stanley, editor of Ninth Letter. “It’s more of a community experience, unlike the solitary act of reading.”

By Tom Lynch

Early Sunday evening and Logan Square’s hipster hotspot The Whistler is sprinkled with patrons, some sipping the bar’s unique summertime cocktails, others just a PBR, please. The Orange Alert Reading Series takes place here roughly every third Sunday of the month and tonight’s lineup consists of “How to Hold a Woman” author Billy Lombardo, plus Andrew Farkas, Tim Hall and West Virginian Scott McClanahan. Founder and emcee Jason Behrends takes to the stage and thanks the modest crowd for coming. “I know it’s hard to come out to a bar at six on a Sunday,” he admits into the microphone. A handful of uninterested drinkers respectfully head out to the patio as to not disrupt the reading with their conversation. For the next hour, the only sounds you can hear are the author’s expressive voices and the air conditioner kicking on and off. Even the bartenders mix the drinks quietly.

“I’m definitely optimistic about the landscape in general,” Behrends says of the current place of literary events in Chicago, a day later over the phone. Behrends began his Orange Alert venture in 2006 with a Web site, orangealert.net, featuring interviews with writers, musicians and artists, then launched Orange Alert Press in March of 2008. The reading series began last November. “There are a lot of reading series in town,” he says, “but even though there are ten or twelve that I know of, I felt that there still could be one more.” Read the rest of this entry »

Is it wrong to feel optimistic? You couldn’t be blamed if you didn’t. Yet while the country’s economy crumbles around us and less and less funds are available for the producers of the printed word, those in the literary world are finding new and inventive ways to stay afloat. We will not go down without a fight, and progress, of course, is key. So is awareness—in order to get the word out more efficiently (and, likely, to untether itself from the uncertain future of the paper form), Printers Row Book Fair changed its name from “Book Fair” to “Lit Fest” to have a title that better fully represents the weekend’s events, in time for its twenty-fifth anniversary edition. As is our custom, we time our annual Lit 50 list to the weekend’s events; this year’s list of local behind-the-scenes literati—no straight-up authors or poets this time—covers a large spectrum of Chicago’s world of words. As with past years we sought out those behind the smaller presses as well as the monumental figures. Some new names have emerged and many staples appear again, but all tirelessly labor to bring this ancient art to the community at large. Read the rest of this entry »

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Honestly, do you really need to hear once more that the music industry is, uh, changing? That much you already know. What you might not know is exactly how artists developed new ways to funnel their music to the public, how fans themselves became mouth-to-mouth (or file to file) distributors and live music has become even more essential in the marketplace. In essence, how boomboxes and CD players gave way to laptops and the Internet. Chicago Tribune music critic and co-host of “Sound Opinions” Greg Kot chronicles this progression in his new book, “Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music,” which hits shelves this week. To achieve a greater understanding of where exactly the music business is at the present-plus, with all probability, where it’s headed-Kot’s analysis can work as a textbook. Now if I could just figure out how to open this .rar file…(Tom Lynch)

Greg Kot discusses “Ripped” May 27 at 57th Street Books, 1301 East 57th, (773)684-1300, at 6pm. Free.

The Seminary Co-op Bookstore sits at the bottom of a set of gray stairs, polished to sheen from years of wear, in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary across the street from the main quadrangles of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. It unfolds in a series of differently shaped passageways, the ceiling crisscrossed with pipes and ducts and the concrete floor sounding with the muffled footsteps of sneaker-clad patrons. Sitting on the wooden shelves, like artifacts in the wall recesses of a catacomb, is the largest collection of academic titles in the United States. “I don’t think there’s a question [that we carry the most academic titles in the country]. We’re the largest single customer for a lot of university presses,” explains Jack Cella, the closest thing to a general manager for the consumer-owned Co-op and its sister store 57th Street Books, in another basement three blocks away from the seminary. Read the rest of this entry »