In a recent review of two novels by Native American author Tommy Orange, Francine Prose comments on what she calls “the land acknowledgment” phrase that is recited at many public meetings from coast-to-coast. In San…
Posts published by “Jonah Raskin”
“The Vietnamese national character is rapidly changing. Our value system is falling apart. Gangsters are making incredible fortunes on the black market.” – Professor Hoang Ngoc Hien, Hanoi intellectual, 1995 “We’re getting wonderful cooperation from…
“The idea that we’re the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous. Wait until this wave of prosperity is over! Wait ten or fifteen years! Wait…
They did not come to the Civic Center in San Francisco on April 5, 2025 to speak truth to power. They know that power doesn’t listen to people, not the powerful but vulnerable demigods in…
Paul McCartney heard rumors of the wild goings-on in the Haight and visited on April 4, 1967. At the Fillmore Auditorium, he listened to a rehearsal by the Jefferson Airplane. At Marty Balin’s and Jack…
“The hospital,” George Orwell wrote, “is the antechamber to the tomb.” Orwell knew whereof he spoke. For much of his life he was in and out of hospitals because of serious health issues. For decades,…
The old men and women in Stacy Torres’s new book, At Home in the Big City: Growing Old in Urban America, (UC Press; $29.95), are not like the original members of the Grey Panthers, the…