Milwaukee author Liza Weimer will speak at Boswell Book Company on Tuesday, August 25 at 7 p.m. in a virtual event co-sponsored by the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.
Very soon, school will begin again and after all that’s transpired over the past few months, it seems like a perfect opportunity for teachers to help students explore controversial issues with experiential assignments. This is (kind of) what happens in a new YA book by Milwaukee author Liza Wiemer when a popular teacher directs a class of high school seniors to argue for the Final Solution, the Nazi plan for the extermination of all Jewish people. What the teacher might believe to be an opportunity for students to explore different viewpoints and sharpen their critical thinking skills is viewed as a way to fuel intolerance and discrimination by many of the students. Among them, Logan and Cade, whose decision to take a stand against this assignment unleashes a maelstrom of controversy of its own as it pits community members and parents against the student body’s outrage.
Far-fetched pedagogy or not, the novel’s plot is based on a true story. In 2017, an upstate New York school district assigned a project asking high school students to pretend to be members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party and argue for genocide. Student voices and calls for justice forced the community there to confront the hatred behind this seemingly educational debate, much as it does in Wiemer’s timely book The Assignment.
Wiemer is a UW-Madison graduate who makes her home in the Milwaukee area. She will speak with Boswell Book’s Jenny Chou over zoom at 7 p.m. Tuesday, August 25 in a virtual event co-sponsored by the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center. Register for the Zoom event at boswellbooks.com.
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Black Lives Poetry Reading
The Poetry Coalition, a national organization representing more than 25 non-profit arts organizations (including Milwaukee’s Woodland Pattern Book Center), will present a live virtual poetry reading in support of black lives on Tuesday, August 18. “One Poem: A Protest Reading in Support of Black Lives” will feature artists and writers from across the country, including two esteemed Milwaukee poets. Nikki Wallschlaeger, the author of two full-length poetry collections (Houses, Crawlspace) as well as the graphic book I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel, will be reading for Woodland Pattern, and UW-Milwaukee professor and former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser will the featured reader for Indigenous Nation Poets. The “One Poem” protest reading will be broadcast live on YouTube and CrowdCast at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 18. RSVP at www.Crowdcast.io/e/OnePoem.
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