Friday 1/18 – Thursday 1/24
19 SATURDAY After fleeing the Russian civil war as a teenager, feminist philosopher and activist Raya Dunayevskaya came to Chicago and began working with the various progressive movements of the 1920s. She also served for two years as Trotsky’s secretary in Mexico, wrote the first English translation of Marx’s 1844 manuscripts, and developed a critique of the totalitarian tendencies of Marxist philosophy known as Marxist humanism. The author of numerous works of philosophy, feminist theory, and social criticism, she died in Chicago in 1987. To celebrate the recent publication of Dunayevskaya’s collected writings, The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx, the book’s editors, Peter Hudis and Kevin Anderson, along with author Terry Moon and feminist scholar Madhuri Deshmukh, will discuss her work and legacy today at 2 in the seventh floor author’s room of the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State. It’s free; call 312-236-0799 for more information.
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22 TUESDAY Fashioning a city of big readers out of the City of Big Shoulders may be on the Daley agenda, but Greg Holden, author of Literary Chicago: A Book Lover’s Tour of the Windy City, sees Chicago’s literary legacy all around us, in its neighborhoods, cityscapes, bars, and cafes. Tonight at 7:30 he’ll trace the local steps of literary figures such as Richard Wright, Harriet Monroe, Ben Hecht, and Ernest Hemingway at the Maze branch of the Oak Park Public Library, 845 S. Gunderson in Oak Park (708-386-4751); it’s free.
