Malcolm X’s former prison cell becomes first of 1,000 planned ‘freedom libraries’

The first of the planned amenities for US prisoners opens in the Massachusetts jail where the campaigner was incarcerated in the 1940s:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/07/malcolm-x-former-prison-cell-becomes-first-of-1000-planned-freedom-libraries-?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

Poems from Amanda Gorman’s released-this-week collection Call Us What We Carry:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/from-call-us-what-we-carry-poetry-by-amanda-gorman

Writing with Fire, a new documentary film about women journalists in India. The filmmakers discuss it here, on PBS: 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_h3A0-zUjvw&feature=share

 

A COUPLE MORNINGS AGO WHILE I HELD THE SIGN, a Black woman looking stylish and cool in gray boots and gray jeans and a gray puffy coat and a gray winter beanie came by and pulled her mask with rhinestones on it down and said ‘Fight the Power, Baby!’

 

Mel Brooks at 95 is coming out with a memoir. Here’s a Q&A with him about it:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/mel-brooks-writes-it-all-down

 

‘The Times’ picks its top 100 books of 2021.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/22/books/notable-books.html?referringSource=articleShare

 

Gish Jen on storytelling across cultures. From ‘The New Yorker’:

https://apple.news/AXXlHF4j0QI-Nm9VONOcW_Q