Class Note 2000
Issue
November-December 2020
Hello, classmates.
I am writing this column deep in the pandemic, at the end of August, when many of us are likely preoccupied with making arrangements for our children while schools are closed this fall. I hope things are looking brighter as 2021 draws closer.
Michael Leong, who teaches at California Institute of the Arts, recently published a critical study, Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry. He says the book “accounts for why so many contemporary poets have turned to source material, from newspapers to governmental records, as inspiration for their poetry and argues that if bureaucracy and documentation have the power to police and traumatize through the exercise of state power, then so, too, can document-based poetry function as an unofficial, counterhegemonic, and popular practice that authenticates marginalized experiences at the fringes of our cultural memory.” Michael lives in Los Angeles.
Max Gross also published a book, a novel called The Lost Shtetl. He says it is a story about a Jewish village in Poland that is so insignificant and hermetic that it is completely overlooked by the Nazis in World War II and the Soviets thereafter, only to come crashing into the 21st century after a marriage dispute spins out of control. Max is a former staff writer for The New York Post and The Forward and is currently editor-in-chief of the Commercial Observer. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.
Congratulations to Tracey Deer, who received the Toronto International Film Festival’s Emerging Talent Award this fall. “Tracey is an authentic, leading Indigenous voice globally and one the industry should watch closely,” according the film festival’s codirector. Tracey debuted her first feature film, Beans, this year. It’s a semiautobiographical tale of a 12-year-old Mohawk girl named Beans, who is torn between innocent childhood and reckless adolescence; forced to grow up fast and become the tough Mohawk warrior she needs to be during the Oka Crisis, the turbulent Indigenous uprising that tore Quebec and Canada apart for 78 tense days in the summer of 1990.
Happy holidays—and keep me in mind for all of your updates in the new year!
—Kate (Ryan) Stowe, 91 Waterman Place, St. Louis, MO 63112; dartmouth2000secretary@gmail.com
I am writing this column deep in the pandemic, at the end of August, when many of us are likely preoccupied with making arrangements for our children while schools are closed this fall. I hope things are looking brighter as 2021 draws closer.
Michael Leong, who teaches at California Institute of the Arts, recently published a critical study, Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry. He says the book “accounts for why so many contemporary poets have turned to source material, from newspapers to governmental records, as inspiration for their poetry and argues that if bureaucracy and documentation have the power to police and traumatize through the exercise of state power, then so, too, can document-based poetry function as an unofficial, counterhegemonic, and popular practice that authenticates marginalized experiences at the fringes of our cultural memory.” Michael lives in Los Angeles.
Max Gross also published a book, a novel called The Lost Shtetl. He says it is a story about a Jewish village in Poland that is so insignificant and hermetic that it is completely overlooked by the Nazis in World War II and the Soviets thereafter, only to come crashing into the 21st century after a marriage dispute spins out of control. Max is a former staff writer for The New York Post and The Forward and is currently editor-in-chief of the Commercial Observer. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.
Congratulations to Tracey Deer, who received the Toronto International Film Festival’s Emerging Talent Award this fall. “Tracey is an authentic, leading Indigenous voice globally and one the industry should watch closely,” according the film festival’s codirector. Tracey debuted her first feature film, Beans, this year. It’s a semiautobiographical tale of a 12-year-old Mohawk girl named Beans, who is torn between innocent childhood and reckless adolescence; forced to grow up fast and become the tough Mohawk warrior she needs to be during the Oka Crisis, the turbulent Indigenous uprising that tore Quebec and Canada apart for 78 tense days in the summer of 1990.
Happy holidays—and keep me in mind for all of your updates in the new year!
—Kate (Ryan) Stowe, 91 Waterman Place, St. Louis, MO 63112; dartmouth2000secretary@gmail.com