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"A third-generation Mexican American, he lives in Tucson, Arizona and his job [2008-2012] included tracking migrants in the Sonoran desert, which separates Mexico from the US...
"When I left, it all seemed infinitely more complex than when I joined. Writing this book was a way of grappling with those complexities and I was really concerned with acknowledging them. Acknowledging the human cost of our border policy, and the ways in which individuals are caught up in it. This policy is pushing people to cross, away from the cities, away from the heavily patrolled areas, into the most remote and dangerous parts of the desert where many of them die. I mean [our policy] really serves to weaponise that landscape. So I carry those people with me, inside me and I hold them in my mind. We don’t acknowledge or mourn these people’s deaths, we don’t read about them every day, we don’t even name them. So many of them are unidentified." See More
Our Public Conversation with Aslı Erdoğan is now SOLD OUT... but don't worry! We will be live-streaming this important program on Facebook and on our website (www.AlphabetCity.org) beginning at 5pm on Saturday.
Get a sneak peek, courtesy of Littsburgh, here:
City of Asylum added an event.
Stoop is a Verb is a 70-minute jazz program with music, spoken word, singing, and dance. Jazz will be performed by the Oliver Lake Quintet: Yoichi Uzeki (piano), Robert Sabin (bass), Gene Lake (drums), and Bruce Williams (alto & soprano sax). Joining them will be 3 actors/singers and 2 dancers curated by Attack Theatre.
Stoop is Verb is the culmination of over a decade of Oliver Lake’s creative work and residencies with City of Asylum on Pittsburgh’s Northside.
In 2014, Lak...e worked with transcripts of 7 professionally conducted focus groups that City of Asylum commissioned with Northside organizations and residents. He sampled and mixed phrases from these interviews to make lyrics for songs he composed. Stoop is a Verb is thus a community conversation between Northsiders who may never have spoken together except in these songs.
The performance on Sunday night will be followed by a 30-minute discussion, led by Marty McGough, who conducted the original focus groups. He will be asking questions such as: Has the Northside changed at all since the piece was written and if so, how? How do the issues raised relate to bigger issues in the world today?
The issues that effect the Northside are ones that also effect Pittsburgh and the nation, and the conversations that arise in Stoop is a Verb are timely.
