“We the People solemnly swear to Manifest our Common Destiny as a diverse and multicultural global humanity with respect and recognition of the freedom, equality and sovereignty of all nations and peoples on our blessed planet earth, in opposition to the destructive and unsustainable path of war, extraction, over-consumption and imperialism, on which the colonial forefathers have set us on and which continues to harm all life forms on this planet, from the greatest to smallest each and every day.”
Saturday, Sept. 30th, 4:30 pm, Book Castle, 443 Cortland Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110
Led by Clarion Alley Mural Project, Manifest Differently is a new project developed and directed by Kim Shuck and Megan Wilson.
Over the next year, 2023/24, we’ll be working together with 38 diverse, multigenerational visual/media artists and poets to interrogate the history of Manifest Destiny and its legacies of inherited and perpetuated violence, trauma, and addiction, and the outgrowth of resistance and resilience – giving fire to movements for social/ culture change.
The project is supported by independent curator Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, California historian Barbara Berglund Sokolov, humanities advisors Mary Jean Robertson, Kyoko Sato, Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, Anita Chang, and David A. M. Goldberg.
Feb 18, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM; Clarion Performing Arts Center, 2 Waverly Pl, San Francisco, CA 94108, USA
3rd Saturday Poetry in Chinatown is a monthly reading series. It is curated by poet Greg Pond. In this series, each reading will have two featured poets. There will be an open mic before and after each feature. In this inaugural reading we’re honored to present poet, playwright and performer Genny Lim, and San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin. Sign up to read at the open mic at 1 pm. We will accommodate as many participants as we can.
Genny Lim is a recipient of the PEN Oakland Reginald Lockett and Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Awards. She was San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate (2016-2018). Her award-winning play Paper Angels has been produced throughout the U.S., in Canada and China. She is author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA!, La Morte Del Tempo, and co-author of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, winner of the American Book Award. Lim has collaborated with numerous jazz musicians, including Max Roach, Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Marcus Shelby and Del Sol String Quartet.
Tongo Eisen-Martin is a San Francisco native. He graduated from Columbia University and taught at its Institute for Research in African-American Studies. He created the 2012 curriculum We Charge Genocide Again. Tongo has also taught at detention centers, including San Quentin and Rikers Island. He is the co-founder of Black Freighter Press.
Honors and awards
Eisen-Martin’s 2017 book Heaven Is All Goodbyes, published by City Lights, won a PEN Oakland Award, the 2018 American Book Award, 2018 California Book Award, and 2018 National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year. His 2020 title, Blood on the Fog, published by City Lights was named a Best Poetry Book of 2021 by Elisa Gabbert of the New York Times
Monday, December 5, 7pm to 8pm Bethany Methodist Church
Odd Mondays welcomes authors Peter Kupfer, Genny Lim, and Michael David Lukas on Monday, December 5 from 7pm to 8pm in-person at 1270 Sanchez Street (Bethany Methodist Church) in Noe Valley, San Francisco. Free admission. Masks required by the venue. One block west of the Clipper Street stop on the J MUNI.
Peter will read from his new historical memoir The Glassmaker’s Son, Genny from her poetry collection Child of War, and Michael from his novel The Last Watchman of Old Cairo.
Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event and in-store and online with Folio Books San Francisco, 3957 24th Street in Noe Valley.
About the Authors
Peter Kupfer is a San Francisco-based writer, editor, and photographer. His stories about business and technology, the arts and culture, and other subjects have appeared in major newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Observer, and Metropolis magazine. He was a copy editor at the San Francisco Chronicle for many years. The Glassmaker’s Son is his first book.
Genny Lim is San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate emeritus. Lim’s award-winning play, Paper Angels, was the first Asian American play aired on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985 and has been performed throughout the U.S., Canada and China. She is author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA!, La Morte Del Tempo, and co-author, along with the late Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung, of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, which won the American Book Award in 1980. Her recent anthology of Senior Asian American memoirs, Window: Glimpses of Our Storied Past, includes the stories of former World War II Camp survivors. Lim has worked with past Jazz legends, such as Max Roach and long-time collaborators, Jon Jang, John Santos, Francis Wong and Anthony Brown. She is a member of The Last Hoisan Poets with Nellie Wong and Flo Oy Wong, who recently collaborated with Del Sol String Quartet in the United States of Asian America Festival.
Translated into more than a dozen languages, Michael David Lukas‘ first novel The Oracle of Stamboul was a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, won the Sami Rohr Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, the Prix Interallié for Foreign Fiction, and the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal. A recipient of scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, William J. Fulbright Foundation, and Elizabeth George Foundation. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University.
Reading and signing. 30 writers marking the 10th year of the War on Terror.
Genny reads her poems, “Revoked,” “Resurrection from Egypt to Wall Street,” “Exile,” “37 Practices of a Bodhisattva,” “This is My Country,” “Life is a Riff” and “The People’s Prayer” at the DNA Lounge, 375 Eleventh Street, San Francisco.
Genny Lim’s reading – Conversations at the Wartime Cafe: a Decade of War 2001-2011
The Poetry Center presents poets Q. R. Hand Jr., Genny Lim, and Juan Felipe Herrera, presenting their poetry at the South of Market Cultural Center (subsequently SOMArts), San Francisco. Hand and Lim each read solo from their work, and Herrera is joined in his performance by Troca, a Bay Area grupo featuring a mix of percussion, bass, and guitar. The poets, who each offer extended sets, are introduced by Poetry Center director Jim Hartz, who thanks poet Wilfredo Castaño of the South of Market Cultural Center, along with the San Francisco Arts Commission, for the community-centered collaboration with The Poetry Center.
Genny Lim, two poems, Feb 24 1983 at South of Market Cultural Center — The Poetry Center
Genny Lim reads two poems: “She sits in a slip, mirror in hand….” and “A Woman’s Room” (noted as “a poem for Virginia Woolf”), on February 24, 1983, at the South of Market Cultural Center (now SOMArts), on a program organized by The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University. Featured besides Lim on this historic full-program video are extended performances by fellow San Francisco poets Q. R. Hand Jr. and Juan Felipe Herrera. The video-still depicts Lim drawing the Chinese character for “woman.”
Poetry Reading
