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World Premiere of
Mango Tribe's
to Debut SEPTEMBER
5-8, 2002
Vittum Theatre Chicago, Illinois
CHICAGO, IL (August 7, 2002) - Sisters in the
Smoke makes its world debut in Chicago at the Vittum Theater from
September 5-8, 2002, as part of the Guild Complex's annual Women Writers
Series. In its eighth year, the Guild Complex Women Writers Series
provides a diverse community of women and men with greater access to
women1s literature and literary performance.
Sisters in the Smoke is the 2002 original
theatrical production from the cast and crew of Mango Tribe Productions,
the first show to be produced by the Asian American Artists
Collective-Chicago. The show focuses on violence in the Asian/Pacific
Islander American (APIA) community and how artistic expression helps us
heal. Unlike traditional theater, Mango Tribe has thrown in an element of
experimental variation which includes rotating scenes--the September 5 and
7 performances include several acts that are not included in the September
6 and 8 shows, and vice versa.
Mango Tribe is an APIA women's performance collective
that promotes multi-arts collaboration and encourages artistic activism
through theater and education. It is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and
multi-disciplinary ensemble comprised of 22 APIA women from Chicago, New
York City, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis.
"This is a historical moment," states Anida
Yoeu Esguerra, founder and executive producer of Mango Tribe. "We are
creating a new tradition of performance in Chicago. Sisters in the
Smoke is groundbreaking work because of its unique inter-city
collaborative fusion of theater, music, and dance."
In 2000, Mango Tribe produced Mangoes, Cigarettes,
and My Mama's Hands: Snapshots of a Mental Landscape at Chicago's
Chopin Theater to rave reviews and a packed house of 300 people. Since
then, Mango Tribe followers--as well as theater enthusiasts and Chicago's
artistic and activist community--have eagerly anticipated the premiere of
Sisters in the Smoke. Directed by Anida Yoeu Esguerra and Emily C.
Chang, the show fuses together elements of poetry, hip-hop, theater,
dance, video, and music into a series of vignettes that are unified on the
issue of violence.
Traditional South Indian dance and Asian folk songs are
combined on stage with such contemporary arts as tap dance, spoken word,
break-dancing, and video projection. Vignettes include survivors' personal
stories of violence and dramatizations motivated by media headlines. Other
vignettes utilize video and audio technology to explore the literal
interpretations of violence and the scars they leave behind. Sisters
interweaves the traditional and the modern, the personal and the global,
and the artist and the community.
"Sisters in the Smoke is as much a
presentation of resistance and struggle through art as it is an effort to
cleanse the soul, to share stories, to heal, and to create change,"
says Chang, who along with Esguerra is a member of the nationally renowned
spoken word group, I Was Born With Two Tongues. "We are doing
this not only for ourselves and our community, but to educate and engage
others in helping to end all forms of oppression and violence against
women."
Advance ticket sales will be available through the
Guild Complex for $15 ($12 students/seniors/ Guild members), and a package
deal of two tickets for $25 ($20 students/seniors/Guild members) will be
available for audiences who want to see both versions of the show on
different nights.
After the long-awaited Chicago debut in September, Sisters
in the Smoke will premiere in New York this winter, and Mango Tribe
plans to take the show on the road in the spring of 2003.
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is an Asian/Pacific Islander American (APIA) women's
interdisciplinary performance group founded on the belief that
collective creation can be the most powerful form of art. The mission of
Mango Tribe is to use experimental community-based theater to create a
stronger presence of APIA females in the performing arts on a national
and local level. For information: www.mangotribe.com
Contact: info@mangotribe.com
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Life on Mars
By Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In its review of the book, Publishers Weekly noted the collection's "lyric brilliance" and "political impulses [that] never falter." A New York Times review stated, "Smith is quick to suggest that the important thing is not to discover whether or not we're alone in the universe; it's to accept—or at least endure—the universe's mystery. . . . Religion, science, art: we turn to them for answers, but the questions persist, especially in times of grief. Smith's pairing of the philosophically minded poems in the book’s first section with the long elegy for her father in the second is brilliant." Life on Mars follows Smith's 2007 collection, Duende, which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the only award for poetry in the United States given to support a poet's second book, and the first Essence Literary Award for poetry, which recognizes the literary achievements of African Americans.
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The Body’s Question (2003) was her first published collection. Smith said Life on Mars, published by small Minnesota press Graywolf, was inspired in part by her father, who was an engineer on the Hubble space telescope and died in 2008.
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Allah, Liberty, and Love
The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom
By Irshad Manji
In Allah, Liberty and Love, Irshad Manji paves a path for Muslims and non-Muslims to transcend the fears that stop so many of us from living with honest-to-God integrity: the fear of offending others in a multicultural world as well as the fear of questioning our own communities. Since publishing her international bestseller, The Trouble with Islam Today, Manji has moved from anger to aspiration. She shows how any of us can reconcile faith with freedom and thus discover the Allah of liberty and love—the universal God that loves us enough to give us choices and the capacity to make them. Among the most visible Muslim reformers of our era, Manji draws on her experience in the trenches to share stories that are deeply poignant, frequently funny and always revealing about these morally confused times. What prevents young Muslims, even in the West, from expressing their need for religious reinterpretation? |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update
17 May 2012
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