Writers and Resistance
Great writers, since ancient times have delivered disturbing truths to the ears of the powerful. That tradition continues to the present. Harold Pinter of Britain may be the most eminent living playwright in the English-speaking world today. He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature. In his acceptance speech he said, “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.” Pinter’s speech, widely covered in Europe and around the world, was barely reported on in the United States.
Recorded at Town Hall.
Speakers
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is a world-renowned, award-winning writer and global justice activist. Tariq Ali says of her, “She is both loathed and feared by the Indian elite. Loathed because she speaks her mind. Feared because her voice reaches the world outside India and damages the myths perpetrated by New Delhi.” She is the recipient of the prestigious European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement, and the PEN Pinter Prize for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.” Among her many books are The God of Small Things, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, My Seditious Heart, and Azadi. Her latest books are The Architecture of Modern Empire and Mother Mary Comes to Me.
Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Galeano of Uruguay was one of Latin America’s most distinguished writers, journalists, and historians. He was the recipient of many honors including the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom and the American Book Award. His groundbreaking book, Open Veins of Latin America changed the way we look at Latin America with its rich and complex cultures, traditions, and diverse political currents. Among his many other books are Memory of Fire, Mirrors, The Book of Embraces, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, Upside Down, We Say No and Mirrors. Of his writing he said, “It’s an attempt to say more with less every time, to transmit the electricity of life through the electricity of words.” He passed away in 2015.
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