My Calendar

Events in October 2019

  • - LITERATURE ON THE LAWN: POETS IN DISTRESS
    LITERATURE ON THE LAWN: POETS IN DISTRESS

    LITERATURE ON THE LAWN: POETS IN DISTRESS


    October 3, 2019

    Join us for the first Arts Walk for Book Lovers featuring Poets in Distress! This event takes place on October 3rd at 7pm at the Riverside Main Library, located at 3581 Mission Inn Avenue, 92501.

    The Poets in Distress troupe poetry readings will be followed by open mic.

    Brutus Chieftain is founder of the performance poetry troupe Poets in Distress and author of multiple indie poetry collections, including “The Suburban Fool,” “Nuns in Uniforms get Free Donuts,” “Brutus in Benderland,” and “Tales of an American Peasant.” He lives in Moreno Valley with his wife and two sons. At readings, he hates long introductions. He encourages poets to “Shut up and read the poem.”

    “I want a rhinestone tiara / One that makes all the other girls at the trailer parks go “ooo-ooo” / One that sits hight on my head / One that makes me look like I’ve just had the most brilliant idea / I want a rhinestone tiara / So I can wear it to work and people will stop tossing croutons in my hair” —Betty Nude, I Want a Rhinestone Tiara

    “Willow turns into iron skeleton charged with artificial current, it weeps and flutters and shorts out the toaster / Toast pops up scorched with the face of Jesus graven image, the other slice has Buddha / I butter the bread partake of holy breakfast” —Brother Jude, Voltage Arbor

    Thanks goes to our sponsors, Friends of the Library, and the Riverside Main Library.

  • - CONVERSATIONS AT THE CULVER: BICYCLES AND BOX TRUCKS
    CONVERSATIONS AT THE CULVER: BICYCLES AND BOX TRUCKS

    CONVERSATIONS AT THE CULVER: BICYCLES AND BOX TRUCKS


    October 6, 2019

    Join us for Bicycles and Box Trucks: How Place and Space Affect Race in the Inland Empire with Genevieve Carpio and Juan De Lara.

    What can two scholars on race and place tell us about how local regulations have impacted racial identity, and how that, in turn, has impacted development of the region?

    Genevieve Carpio is Assistant Professor of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, where she works on questions related to spatial theory and histories of relational racial formation. She holds a PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity and a Masters in Urban Planning. She has published in American Quarterly, Journal of American History, and Journal of Urban Affairs, among other venues. Carpio is author of Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race (University of California Press, 2019).

    Juan De Lara is a geographer and an Associate Professor in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His book, Inland Shift: Race, Space, and Capital in Inland Southern California is now available from UC Press. The book uses logistics and commodity chains to unpack the black box of globalization. Professor De Lara's research interests include social movements, urban political economy, Latinx geographies, logistics, immigration, and the racial politics of big data analytics.

    “I wanted to learn what the Inland Empire could teach us about race, space, and power that East LA could not.” —De Lara, Inland Shift

    In her book Collisions at the Crossroads, Carpio discusses “National Mythologies” and “An Anglo Fantasy Past,” which, “elevated white settlers as pioneers, erased Indigenous and Mexican dispossession, and located Chinese residents as perpetual foreigners.”

    This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by UCR Center for Ideas and Society.

  • - SPECIAL CONVERSATIONS AT THE CULVER WITH SUSAN STRAIGHT
    SPECIAL CONVERSATIONS AT THE CULVER WITH SUSAN STRAIGHT

    SPECIAL CONVERSATIONS AT THE CULVER WITH SUSAN STRAIGHT


    October 8, 2019

    Join local literary luminary Susan Straight in conversation with Inlandia's Cati Porter on her moving new memoir, In the Country of Women. While this event is free, RSVP is required through Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-conversation-with-susan-straight-in-the-country-of-women-tickets-72742497769

    What is it like to dwell "in the country of women"?

    NPR calls Susan Straight's new memoir "a chronicle honoring the strength and resilience of six generations of women."

    The L.A. Times says, "[h]er vibrant pages are filled with people of churned-together blood culled from scattered immigrants and native peoples, indomitable women and their babies. Yet they never succumb."

    Newsday calls it, "a book about survival, motherhood, and love, and it’s as big and messy and beautiful as all of these things."

    The New York Times goes further to declare it ".. an ode to the entire multiracial, transnational tribe she claims as her own."

    From the publisher:

    In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women.

    In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self-proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write.

    Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close-knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne’s female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post-slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men.

    Straight’s mother-in-law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan’s family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California.

    Susan Straight writes, "To understand my daughters and their sisterhood, you have to know the women, and sisters, who came before."

    Susan Straight has published eight novels, including Highwire Moon, Between Heaven and Here, and A Million Nightingales. She has been a Finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the National Magazine Award. She is the recipient of the Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Story, the O. Henry Prize, The Lannan Prize for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Granta, McSweeney’s, Black Clock, Harper’s, and other journals. Her work has been translated into Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, and Russian. She is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. She was born in Riverside, where she lives with her family.This event is presented in partnership with UCR Arts and UCR Center for Ideas and Society. It is free and open to the public. Refreshments and book signing to follow. Book sales are on a first come, first served basis and limited to the first fifty paid RSVPs.