Write to Resist: Speaking to Suppression, Disregard, & Dismissal
By Bruce Isaacson
My friend Moniro Ravanipor is an author who is famous in Iran. She’s in touch with women protesting there now. Her books reach for freedom and a rooted sense of justice. She’s had relatives who were killed, jailed, she was jailed herself, and she was subjected to all kinds of sabotage in the United States by the Iranian government. She knows better than most Americans about writing in the face of suppression. Her perspective was recently summed up in her reaction to the publication of Andrew Romanelli’s book Rotgut. She responds: Here is Not There. She admires an author showing all of himself, but describes how much suppression an Iranian artist would experience for this. As she says, Here is Not There. We Americans need to have a sense of what’s good in our culture, while knowing how easily we can lose our freedoms.
My friend Rodney Lee is a specialist in writing through cultural stereotypes. He was a lifelong teacher, an executive at the Clark County School District’s Office of Diversity, and now teaches in prisons. I remember talking to a poet about writing and the varied home dialects we have in Clark County. Students in English are often taught to speak in normalized ‘correct’ speech. Rodney chimed in to the effect that, when you tell students the language they’ve heard since the womb is incorrect, we’re telling them their parents and family are wrong. We can teach them English without telling them they’re families are wrong. Rodney knows a lot about how students experience disregard and dismissal. He also knows how we might reach students in more positive and effective ways.
I’ll host the conversation, Write to Resist: Speaking to Suppression, Disregard & Dismissal, with Moniro and Rodney, at the Las Vegas Book Festival, and this event promises to illuminate key issues of our times. Bruce Isaacson’s conversation with Moniro Ravanipor and Rodney J. Lee is happening at the Las Vegas Book Festival on Saturday, October 22, at 11:30 am at the Poetry Pavilion. Click here to subscribe to Monrio Ravanipor’s newsletter.
Bruce Isaacson was the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada. His latest book, Leningrad to Las Vegas, is available here.
