Rage Against the Machine’s Recommended Reading List

This is Rage Against the Machine’s recommended reading list from the Album cover of “Evil Empire”.

1. “International Terrorism and the CIA” – Mumia Abu-Jamal
2. “Live From Death Row” – Mumia Abu-Jamal
3. “Joe Hill” – Gibbs M. Smith
4. “The Mau Mau War in Perspective” – Frank Furedi
5. “The Aesthetic Dimension” – Herbert Marcuse
6. “The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After ” – Chris Harman
7. “The Media Monopoly” – Ben H. Bagdikian
8. “50 Ways To Fight Censorship” – Dave Marsh
9. “Hegemony and Revolution: A study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political & Cultural Theory” – Walter L. Adamson
10. “The Mismeasure of Man” – Stephen Gould, Che Guevera
11. “A New Society: Reflections for Today’s World” – David Deutschmann, Editor
12. “The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed.)” – Robert C. Tucker, Editor
13. “What Uncle Sam Really Wants” – Noam Chomsky
14. “Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation” – Jonathan Kozol
15. “Marxism and the New Imperialism” – Alex Callinicos, John Rees, Chris Harman, Mike Haynes
16. “Rules for Radicals” – Saul D. Alinsky
17. “A People’s History of the United States” – Howard Zinn
18. “The Lorax” – Dr. Seuss
19. “East Los Angeles, history of a barrio” – Richard Romo
20. “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” – William Blum
21. “Race for Justice: Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Fight Against The Death Penalty” – Leonard Weinglass
22. “Guerilla Warfare” – Che Guevera
23. “Zapata of Mexico” – Peter E. Newell
24. “Malcolm X Speaks – Selected Speeches and statements” – George Breitman
25. “Marxism and the Press: Oppression of Women, Toward a Unitary Theory” – Lise Vogel
26. “Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America” – Walter LaFeber
27. “The Chomsky Reader” – James Peck, Editor
28. “Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise 1940-1990″ – Juan Gomez Quinones
29. “The Wretched of the Earth” – Franz Fanon
30. “What is Communist Anarchism?” – Alexander Berkman
31. “Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson” – George Jackson
32. “Fidel and religion: Conversations With Frei Betto” – Frei Betto
33. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave” – Frederick Douglass
34. “Democracy is in the Streets” – James Miller
35. “Capital, Volume One” – Karl Marx
36. “The Black Panthers Speak” – Philip S. Foner, Editor
37. “Keeping The Rabble in line Interviews with David Barsamian” – Noam Chomsky
38. “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience” – Henry David Thoreau
39. “Darkness at Noon” – Arthur Koester
40. “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life of Diminishing Expectations” – Christopher Lasch
41. “Play it as it lays” – Joan Didion
42. “The State and Revolution” – V.I. Lenin
43. “Soul on Ice” – Eldridge Cleaver
44. “Kwame Nkrumah: The Conarky Years, His Life and Letters” – Compiled by June Milne
45. “Revolutionary Suicide” – Huey P. Newton
46. “The Anarchist Cookbook” – William Powell
47. “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” – Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
48. “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” – James Joyce
49. “Another country” – James Baldwin
50. “The Grapes of Wrath” – John Steinbeck
51. “The Armies of the Night” – Norman Mailer
52. “Invisible Man” – Ralph Ellison
53. “Rebellion from the Roots: Indian uprising in Chiapas” – John Ross
54. “First World Ha! Ha! Ha! – The Zapatista challenge” – Elaine Katzenberger, Editor
55. “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” – Carlos Castaneda
56. “Tropic of Cancer” – Henry Miller
57. “Johnny Got His Gun” – Dalton Trumbo
58. “Essays in existentialism” – Jean-Paul Sartre
59. “How Real is Real? Confusion, disinformation, communication” – Paul Watzlawick
60. “Ghost of a Chance” – William S.Burroughs
61. “Popism :The Warhol Sixties” – Andy Warhol & Pat Hackett
62. “Chicana falsa and other stories of death, identity, and Oxnard” – Michele M. Serros
63. “Promisory Notes: Women in the Transition to socialism” – Sonia Kruks, Ranya Rapp, Marilyn B. Young, Editors
64. “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the making of a gay world” – George Chauncey
65. “This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color” – Cherrie Monzaga, Gloria Anzaluda, Editors
66. “Women of Color Subliminal Seduction” – Wilson Bryan Key, Editor
67. “Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity” – Michael A. Messner
68. “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women” – Susan Faludi
69. “90 Years of Ford” – George H. Dammann
70. “Illustrated History of Ford” – George H. Damman
71. “The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women Movements in Global Perspective” – Amrita Basu
72. “Miles, the Autobiography” – Miles Davis
73. “The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade” – Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart Edward Albert
74. “The Graphic Work” – M. C. Escher
75. “Bob Marley Spirit Dancer” – Bruce W. Talamon
76. “Dali: The Paintings ” – Benedikt Taschen, Robert Taschen, Giles Neret
77. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” – Ernest Hemingway
78. “Eros And Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud” – Herbert Marcuse
79. “Cheer Up Book for a Proud American” – Dan Valentine
80. “The Way Things Aren’t” – Steve Rendall, Jim Naureckas, Jeff Cohen
81. “War and an Irish Town” – Eamonn McCann
82. “Moving the Center: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms” – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
83. “Interview With Chairman Gonzalo” – El Diario Newspaper
84. “The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux” – James O. Gump
85. “The Last Mau Mau Field Marshalls” – David Njagi
86. “God Dies By The Nile” – Naval El Saadawi
87. “You Can’t Win” – Jack Black
88. “Year 501: The Conquest Continues” – Noam Chomsky
89. “Beyond Good and Evil” – Friedrich Nietzche
90. “Deterring Democracy” – Noam Chomsky
91. “Mau Mau Detainee” – Josiah Mwangi Kariuki
92. “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” – Peter Mathiessen
93. “Marx’s Kapital for Beginners” – David Smith & Phil Evans
94. “How the Other Half Lives” – Jacob A. Riis
95. “The Weatherman” – Steve Thayer
96. “U.S.A.” – John Dos Passos
97. “The Naked and the Dead” – Norman Mailer
98. “My Antonia” – Willa Cather
99. “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State” – Friedrich Engels
100. “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” – Joan Didion
101. “The Gypsy’s Curse” – Harry Crews
102. “Basta! Land and the Zapatista – Rebellion in Chiapas” – George A. Collier
103. “The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, Resistance” – Annette James, Editor
104. “SNCC The New Abolitionists” – Howard Zinn

Not on the Cover but on the Recommended Reading List…

1. “Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores, Magon and the Mexican Revolution” – Ward S. Albro
2. “Go Tell It On a Mountain” – James Baldwin
3. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
4. “Black Boy” – James Baldwin
5. “Animal Farm” – George Orwell
6. “Steal This Book” – Abbie Hoffman
7. “The Quiet American” – Graham Greene
8. “Odes To Opposites” – Pablo Neruda
9. “Giovanni’s Room” – James Baldwin
10. “The Confessions of Nat Turner” – William Styron
11. “O Pioneers” – Willa Cather
12. “The Souls of Black Folk” – W.E.B. DuBois
13. “Rights of Man” – Thomas Paine
14. “The Bluest Eye” – Toni Morrison
15. “Salvador” – Joan Didion
16. “Savage Inequalities” – Jonathan Kozol
17. “Between Hell and Reason” – Albert Camus
18. “Women, Race, and Class” – Angela Y. Davis
19. “Song of Solomon” – Toni Morrison
20. “American Slavery, American Freedom” – Edmund S. Morgan
21. “America’s Reconstruction” – Eric Foner & Olivia Mahoney
22. “Parting the Waters” – Taylor Branch
23. “Native Son” – Richard Wright
24. “Dispatches” – Michael Herr
25. “Ideas & Opinions” – Albert Einstein
26. “Censored: The News that Didn’t Make the Newspapers and Why” – Carl Jensen
27. “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” – Jack Herer

Original List from Everything 2. But I wanted to replicate it for my own sake. I love RATM.

You’ll be a Man, My Son!

on an other binge of inspiration… This is one of my favourite poems, although by not one of my favourite poets. Either way we need to create value for ourselves using whatever tools, means, media, content possible. this one does it for me in some sense. There are many more sources, but this is one which is part of my ‘rejuvenation’ arsenal. Hope it inspires you too.

“If” by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

To Write.

What makes good writing, good writing?  I’ve been reading books which meet that standard… Man Booker, etc. It seems that creativity in presentation and wordplay are not the essential ingredients, but they are important. At the core, it’s the stories which either go deep into human experience or culture. 

It’s the stories which talk to sadness, laughter, happiness, depression, craziness and all other emotions through the little everyday things humans go through and the similar way we react to situations.  Sometimes littered here and there with insight and modern knowledge of psychology and science.

But first… you need to put something on paper, or wordpress. I think the best place to start would be personal experience. Think of some situation in which you felt something… deeply and describe every single detail.  Something will flow from there.

I need to start.

Tags: writing, beginning, start, write, how to

The Currency of the Imagination

“Are there gonna be strobe lights?”
“Yeah… in their hearts!”

This review is a bit delayed, but I attended a poetry reading by Suheir Hammad and the Palestinian Audiovisual group Tashweesh recently on the Southbank Centre’s “Imagining Peace” Poetry International 2010 event.

The introduction to Suheir Hammad, renowned Palestinian-American poet, and Tashweesh, audiovisual Palestinian group mentioned something about poetry being the currency of the imagination.  A very nice description I think… in a philosophical kind of way which can mean very different things to different people, but that’s what poetry is right?

Anyway… I’ve always loved Suheir’s poetry and the way the event was sold regarding Tashweesh, the audiovisual elements, etc. I was expecting something great.  The DJ of the group, MC Boikutt, is known to me too where a few years back I downloaded mp3′s of his work and his group, Ramallah Underground.  Well… I got something I really didn’t expect… you know the weird artsy thing some artists do where they use static and weird sounds as music, well this was something like that. With an added visual element, the images were jittery, incoherent and sometimes really scary.  I got a few pictures in my head which made sense… riding between two huge walls which looked like the Apartheid Wall in Palestine, and the other being a silhouette of flying birds against the backdrop of a picture of a leaky, dingy sewer.

The sounds also had the heavy constant bass in the background with the front notes being the scratchy static, which gave the unmistakable impression and feeling of oppression and anxiety. I think that is what they were going for but it went on a bit too long and later on in the set there was some elements showing of Boikutt’s previous work which actually had some beat to it before falling back into what eventually just became really irritating sounds and images lacking any further meaning.

Unfortunately in this context I feel that Suheir’s poetry suffered as well in terms of having that dark edge to them instead of the usual meaning.  Suheir, however, did save the show with her humour and personalising the event,,, “Yo London, make some noise! Thanks for your rainy Friday and the river”. The added element of randomly choosing her poetry did work in a way with Tashweesh and some of the audience picking random numbers which she then used to choose poems from her books.

It’s not just her words… but the way she delivers the poetry which makes the impact all the more potent.  The meaning becomes much clearer with her presentation than from plainly reading her work.

Why do I stay awake?

That’s Yusuf, standing next to the stove at 2am frying cheese and corn samoosas. He can’t sleep… actually it’s somewhere between not wanting to and just plain can’t.

“Hungry much?”
“Yes, much.”
“Can you do it in the dark? I can’t sleep with your bloody kitchen lights on.”
“Do you cook in the dark?”
“Oh shutup, I can’t talk at this hour. make some for me, I’ll have it in the morning… Taa… Taaa…”

Suddenly a conversation begins in Yusuf’s head…

Why does someone stay up at night? Why do I? What am I searching for, What’s missing that I need in order to get some bloody sleep? Maybe it’s because I work better at night… or maybe, I just have too much caffeine, well I do but that can’t be it, I’m practically immune by now.

Why am I here? No, that’s too broad a question. What do I want? that’s closer… Am I missing something I need?

Wait… why don’t I just go to sleep. I haven’t tried that. Lay down and eventually it should work, right? So why am I choosing to stay awake? Maybe I’m just screwed up… but everyone is.

What the hell is keeping me awake?

Maybe the philosopher’s had it wrong… maybe that is the ultimate question.

What keeps me awake?

Maybe I should sleep on it.