Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas

priyanka — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

I was initially unimpressed by Firebrands, but that was because I approached it wrong. I tried to sit down in my living room and read it cover-to-cover, and that's not what this book is for. It's a pocket-sized compendium of amazing people—people "left out of the schoolbooks because they were too brown, too female, too poor, too queer, too uneducated, too disabled, or because they daydreamed too much." Each firebrand gets a page-long description, a lovely illustration, and a number of suggestions for further reading.

Firebrands reads somewhat like a reference book, and it could function that way—one could keep it on the shelf in case one heard the name of a lesser-known abolitionist, revolutionary, or what-have-you; then one could simply look that person up. As a blogger, though, I see it as much like a themed blog. It's best opened at random pages, read in fits and starts. It might have been interesting to include some kind of decentralized theme-organization within the book—something along the lines of a blog's tags. A few blog-inspired books have done things like that in recent years, such as the sex-positive anthology Yes Means Yes, which attaches a number of tags at the end of each essay, then lists all tags and their associated entries at the beginning of the book. (Firebrands does have a very nice index, however, so it's possible to navigate the book by themes in that way.)

Once I started reading the book at random and in small chunks, I started liking it a lot. The authors have done a great job of digging up pithy quotations and interesting anecdotes. A few entries lack vividness (it's hard to be enthralled by vague sentences like "She did a lot of community organizing"), but for the most part, these firebrands really sound inspiring. One of my favorite quotations came from the description of Latino baseball player Roberto Clemente: "Clemente's motto was, 'If you have the chance to help others and fail to do so, you are wasting your time on this earth.'" And I was charmed by an anecdote about the singer Nina Simone: "During a recital when she was twelve years old, Nina's parents were asked to relinquish their front row seats to a white family, and Simone refused to perform until her parents were returned to their original seats."

I was also impressed by the book's genuine inclusiveness—it covered a wide array of warriors, artists, leaders, and it did so while pushing beyond the typical "inclusive" boundaries. For example, as a sex-positive activist I was thrilled to note that the painter Frida Kahlo was acknowledged to be both bisexual and polyamorous.

The illustrations add a lot to Firebrands. I particularly love the images by Roger Peet. It goes with the last biography in the book, Zumbi dos Palmares, a Portuguese slave in Brazil who led an insurrection in the 1600s. Firebrands was produced by an artists' cooperative called Justseeds, and it's clear that the whole group pitched in for this book and thought carefully about each element. So you could benefit a bunch of artists by giving this charming collection as a gift! What’s not to love?

Written by: Clarisse Thorn, January 28th 2011

SAW Land and Globalization Poster Series / Siere Del Cartel De Tierra Y Globalizacion

admin — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 15:11:00 +0000

By Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, Street Art Workers

Josh MacPhee and many other artists have been placing poster art for various political causes - such as anti-militarism, the Hands Off Assata movement and the prison industrial complex - throughout Chicago. Now Street Art Workers, an international network of artists affiliated with MacPhee, have started a newsprint political poster arts series. This first collection features posters by artists on the theme of corporate globalization, connecting the economic oppression of several countries simultaneously. Each poster is reminiscent of some of the Cuban poster art with its blue, black and white prints.

Some of the pieces are woodcuts and stencils, while other focus on the text as part of the illustration. One notable poster by Andalusia features one half as a piece written from the perspective of a Jewish American describing his right to live in Israel and the other half is a Palestinian’s words about losing his homeland framed by blue keys. Ally Reeves’ poster describes the privatization of land in Burma, Indonesia and Thailand; the text is interspersed with images of people in agrarian scenes. Although these posters are thought-provoking, some of the posters that rely on images are more arresting. Poland-based artists Lena Szczesna and Filip Berendt rendered a mouth in the shape of the African continent that reads: “Feed Africa.” A piece by London’s Jonathon Baker reinterprets Joe Rosenthal’s recognizable 1945 photograph “Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima” by having the soldiers raise a flag with a barcode instead of Old Glory.

Most of the artwork does not feature women, but the issues (homelessness, the NAFTA Superhighway and genetically altered foods) affect everyone. There’s also a significant number of female artists contributing to the publication. Hopefully there will be more women and more work from more Asian, Latin American, African and Native contributors since the issues reflected in the posters concern them too. Claude Moller’s poster to stop the Shasta Dam in California that would displace the Winnemem Wintu tribe from their sacred sites near McCloud River is a poster that features Native American people. What if the subjects of the art created their own art? In any case, this work makes its viewers think, and the pieces might be worth framing or, at least, posting in a window to catch the attention of those passing by.

Written by: Tara Betts, January 4th 2007