Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, October 7 - October 12
We’re calling this What the Fuck October. Have you slept? I haven’t. We ORB Happy Houred en very much mass and then stacked poetry readings last weekend; Local Economy opened and then opened wider; plus, I saw a poster on a pole and you know the rules: Slut Con goes in the calendar. In other emergency measures, get a family go bag packed this weekend. And El Tímpano is coordinating a poetry writing community workshop for the next few months, all via text! If you’ve ever driven South (East? I am still so unclear) on 580, you might have done a double take at the sign for Ashland (you are NOT in Oregon, even though our national guard is – barring more judges doing the right thing): there’s an exhibition there of art on the theme of “Home” up by artists from this Greater Deepest East Oakland region. PantherFest, a month-long commemoration of the Black Panther Party, is underway back in the heart of radical movement building and over in the West Bay, so is the 23rd annual SF International South Asian Film Festival—beyond Bollywood (and Sandalwood and Tollywood). Also in the West Bay: Books were holding up beds? And now they’re for sale for $1 each? It’s a bonanza if you have the shelf space. We have an Oakland Style week and sneakers are Oakland Style, so go get your kicks with kicks. On the island that used to be a peninsula of Oakland, you can win a pair of tickets for a history walk on the 12th (or 19th) The Mill Valley Film Festival continues, but MOST IMPORTANTLY (ahem: Stephen), the Drunken Film Fest continues in Oakland all week long. And don’t you forget it. –ORB \O/
Tuesday, October 7
Tabletop Worldbuilding and Storytelling for Middle Schoolish Kids, 4pm, Local Economy (College Ave). This one is just for younger people! Orion (a published author as of this month) leads a discussion and game play exploring TTRPG beyond the D&D limits. Middle schoolish kiddos, heed the herald’s call! [Luma]
An Afternoon with Namwali Serpell + Exhibit Opening: Celebrating 21st Century African Literatures, 4 p.m., Morrison Library (Inside Doe Library) (Inside Cal). Transit Book author and Caine Prize winner Namwali Serpell (former Berkeley prof, now making her professional home at a university in Cambridge: “no not that one, the other one”) will read her work and be convivial while you take a look at the opening of the Celebrating 21st Century African Literatures exhibit in Doe Library. [UCB]
Driven by the Movement: a book talk with Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, 5:30pm, West Oakland Branch OPL (West Oakland). Ervin is on hand to discuss the new edition of Driven by the Movement: Reports from the Black Power Era, by his wife, JoNina Abron-Ervin. Both were members of the Black Panther Party, and the book collects stories from the Black liberation struggle from 1965–75. If Lorenzo’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve heard the story about the BPP member who escaped a frameup by hijacking a plane to Cuba. That was him. [OPL]
[Bonus West Bay Event] Debut Novelist A. M. Sosa in conversation with Tomas Moniz, 5:30 pm, Book Passage (Ferry Building). Yacht over from Jack London Sq to listen in on a conversation about And I'll Take Out Your Eyes, “an insultingly good debut” story of a queer Chicano’s cannon-shot into adulthood amidst familial turmoil and the suffocating violence of Stockton, California in the early 2000s. [Book Passage]
Queer Book Club reads Morgan Thomas's Manywhere, 7 pm, Tally Ho! Books (Piedmont Ave). This finalist for a lot of awards features lush and uncompromising stories about characters crossing geographical borders and gender binaries. A world or three between two covers. [Tally Ho!]
Paul Myers on John Candy, 7pm, Mrs Dalloways (College). Local (but also Canadian) author and musician Paul Myers on his new biography John Candy: A Life in Comedy. Remember Spaceballs? Cool Runnings? A golden era of Canadian comedy we will never see again. [MrsDalloways]
Mauri, 7:30pm, Grand Lake Theatre (Grand Ave). One night only!! Mauri is a cinematic invitation into the healing traditions of Aotearoa, a journey carried by Māori healers, elders, and knowledge keepers who tend to intergenerational wounds through land, language, and ceremony. Winner of Best Documentary Feature-2024 Touchstone Independent Film Festival. Post film Q&A with directors, Maurizio and Zara Benazzo. [Grand Lake Theatre]
Also: Orwell: 2+2=5 at The Roxie (West Bay) / Jyoti Puri: South Asia Migrations, Archaeologies of Death at Cal (Berkeley) / Learn Simple Handsewn Bookbinding at Central Berkeley Public Library (Downtown Berkeley) / Blackness and the Politics of Defacement with Dr Tyrone S. Palmer at Cal (Berkeley)
Wednesday, October 8
Ancestral Home Opening, 6 PM at Understory (Fruitvale). Opening exhibition, an evening of art, storytelling, and connections honoring Filipino creativity, memory, and resilience. [insta]
Shobha Rao’s Indian Country, 6pm, Book Society (Elmwood). Rao’s novel is described as being “about love, displacement, and water” but it’s at least as much about trans-historical imperial histories, and the mixed up files of ABCDs and NDNs. Since river reservoirs made the West, we’ve got “renowned dam expert” Del Shannon coming through. [Book Society]
Jeff Chang on Bruce Lee, 7pm, Pegasus (Berkeley). The biography of Bruce Lee we’ve needed, and this is Chang’s hometown book launch. He’ll be in conversation with Adam Mansbach (author of Go the Fuck to Sleep, which was one of the books to fly off the shelves of SPD when I worked in their Berkeley warehouse -- that and a porn star autobio were the books I was picking every day in 2011 [the warehouse workers know your secrets]). [Pegasus]
Oaklandside Between the Lines, 7pm, Clio’s (Lake). Oaklandside editors Alejandra Armstrong, Darwin BondGraham, and Tasneem Raja talk about what they do and how. AND HOW! [Eventbrite]
Crazy Love, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). A queer pop collage epic that reflects the revolutionary cosmopolitan zeitgeist of the late 1960s. [BAMPFA]
Death to Spotify Week 3, 7 pm, Bather’s Library (Telegraph). Bathers, still killin it. Meaning Spotify. Will be recorded (presumably distributed via not spotify). [insta]
Diana Arterian’s Agrippina the Younger, 7pm Womb House Books (Temescal Alley). Arterian’s book is a tour in verse and prose through the ruins of the life of Agrippina, Roman empress, mother to Nero, assassinated at the behest of her son. Can we get Ivanka to turn? [eventbrite]
Rebecca Solnit and Steve Phillips talk about things, 7pm, Oakstop’s California Ballroom (Franklin Street downtown). The inaugural event in Bay Area Book Festival’s “Merritt Dialogue Speaker Series,” moderated by Jane Kim (California Director for The Working Families Party) and I googled for a while to figure out what they were actually going to talk about and lost interest when I hit “an evening where culture meets politics, and storytelling meets strategy.” I bet it’ll be more interesting than that copy-pasta-meets-chatgpt description, though; they both have books out, and I guess there’s your answer. I hope they mention fascism, that’s sort of a thing right now. [eventbrite]
Witches Wednesday: Practical Magic, 8:30pm, Friends and Family (Uptown). In the rather large pantheon of 1990s witch movies, we'll slot this one somewhere between The Craft and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Watch this one for queer old witchy aunts Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest. $6.66 for tix, of course. [Instagram]
Also: Butterflies of the Bay Area at Mrs. Dalloway’s (College Ave) / Bay Area Latin American Chefs at Mägo (Piedmont Ave) / The Value of Groundwater Storage: Evidence from California’s Kern Water Bank with Rania Lachhab at Cal (Berkeley) / Break(ing) Bread: Intergenerational Black Poetry Writing Workshop at the African American Art & Culture Complex (The Fillmore) / Literature for the Masses, Japanese Period Fiction 1913-1941 at Cal (Berkeley) / Learn to Sew Pants at PLACE (Deep East) / Decolonization and Indigeneity in a Global Demilitarized Context at Cal (Berkeley) / Visual Storytelling with Fateme Mokhles at ARTogether (Downtown) / Cross It Out: an arts and crafts writing workshop for Banned Books Week at USF (West Bay) / Saberes para otros mundos posibles (Knowledges for other possible worlds) at Cal (Berkeley) / Matewan at 4 Star (West bay)
Thursday, October 9
The Memoirs of Robert and Mabel Williams: African American Freedom, Armed Resistance, and International Solidarity, 1 pm, Cal (Berkeley). Akinyele K. Umoja and family member Lisa Williams discuss the radical legacy of the Williamses, one more time for those (Aaron) who missed last week’s events. [UCB]
Coffee with a Cop, 3pm, Piedmont Avenue Branch OPL (Piedmont Ave But Not Piedmont The Town Except Maybe Spiritually For Today Only). The fuck is this. If you go, rebalance your personal moral ledger by attending Saturday’s Stop Cop City event at Bathers (see below). [OPL]
[Bonus West Bay Event] A group reading from Tania Pérez Córdova's bilingual novel Noticias de Verano (Summer News), 6pm, CCA (West Bay). Pérez Córdova conducts a reading of the stripped down stories she found in local and international media during a residency and made into a collection of tragic, terrifying, and comical narratives that framed the passage of time normally destined for artistic production. Language, tricky thing, ain’t it.[wattis]
Oakland Garden Club IRL, 6pm, Local Economy (College Ave). The OGC newsletter draws an IRL crowd, and as of presstime, 83 people have RSVPed, so you might be able to get in but don’t expect a seat. Appropriately, Will Tomlinson will talk about cactus breeding techniques, in which being “completely and utterly out of space” is a theme. We hear plant wisdom will be budding and propagating, too. [Luma]
Growing into Strength, 6:30pm, Oakstop (Downtown). A curated program of short films exploring Black womanhood, identity, and resilience; along with films by Zenibu Irene Davis, Jessica Jones, and Cheryl Dunye, Rae Shaw and Cat Brooks will be there to talk about theirs. [eventbrite]
Memorial Park Book Launch, 7PM, Tamarack (Downtown). Minh Nguyen on her debut book of essays, in conversation with Tausif Noor. The pieces reflect on the communist revolution’s complex legacy and how it persists in strange, fraught, moving ways — in Vietnam today, across the world, in the author’s own life. For anyone thinking about what to do with radical histories that are being claimed for multiple ends at once. [insta]
Calle Málaga, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). From Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani, this “warm, funny, and deeply touching film celebrates the right to happiness at any age, the unbreakable bonds of place and memory, and the courage to live on one’s own terms.” (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival). [BAMPFA]
[Bonus West Bay Event] Loria Mendoza comes to town, launches The Body Can Tolerate, 7pm, The Make Out Room (West Bay). Kar explains what it’ll be like: “It’s a long-desired glass of Chartreuse. It’s your crush’s smile. It’s your next tattoo. It’s a postcard never sent but received anyway. It’s a memory you only share with someone now dearly departed. It’s a followed impulse. It’s what you should be reading right now. “ [instagram]
The Courtroom: A Reenactment of One Woman’s Deportation Proceedings, 7:30PM, Oakland Theater Project (Downtown). An urgent docudrama created from real-life transcripts of a deportation trial, arranged by Arian Moayed, aka Stewy from Succession. Opening night is on Thursday and it runs through the weekend. [Oakland Theater Project]
[Bonus West Bay Event Part Two] Down on the Corner, 7:30pm and 8:30pm, intersection of Turk and Taylor streets (West Bay). Site-specific and free dance honoring the legacy of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, featuring queer and trans dancers and artists. The production takes Susan Stryker’s work on crossroads at that intersection to a whole new (embodied) level. [Flyaway Productions]
Also: Radical Vines with Chris Renfro at Donkey and Goat (West Berkeley) / Julie Berry's If Looks Could Kill at Mrs Dalloway’s (College Ave) / Sounds of Freedom: Conversatorio and Live Bomba Performance with Dr. Jade Power-Sotomayor at Cal (Berkeley) / Exhibit Open House -- Shape of Thought: The Book as Art at The Bancroft (Berkeley) / Community Planting at Courtland Creek Park (Melrose)
Friday, October 10
Diane Ehrensaft’s Life’s Work, 12pm, Local Economy (College Avenue). After decades working with children who express their genders in different ways, Ehrensaft, through her research, writing, and clinical practice, has profoundly improved care for young people. She’ll talk about her work and what is happening to it, now, while fascism. This one is already got waitlist, for obvious reasons, but hop on. [LocalEconomy]
The making of Maiden Lane. 3 pm, Nestrick Screening Room in Dwinelle (Cal). Ivy Anderson & Devon Angus discuss bringing Alice Smith's story of being a Barbary Coast sex worker to the silver screen with Pia Sazani. Includes an exclusive screening of some never before seen footage from the film! Followed by a Q&A, book signing & networking opportunity with other local filmmakers. [insta]
State of Firsts, 4:30 pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Documentary on Sarah McBride becoming the first transgender person elected to Congress, with the subject in attendance. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival). [BAMPFA]
Wow, LaRussell at OMCA? Damn. 5pm, OMCA (Lake). This is enough of a big deal that the best “wander in with your kid for free, any friday” event in the East Bay is gonna be a “ok, it’s still free but get a wristband and get here early” kind of a thing. Mixed feelings, but mostly good, I guess. It’ll slap. [OMCA]
Women of a Certain Age Read Poems on Sex and Death, 6pm, Vintage Berkeley (Elmwood). Thanatos and Eros go together, as do Terah Wine Company wines and Vintage Berkeley's “secret garden patio.” “There’s a lake between my legs.” SOLD OUT because of course everyone wants to hear Zeina Hashem Beck, Danusha Laméris and Keetje Kuipers (and more, but these are my faves) read erotic poems. [litquake]
Poetry!, 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown): heidi andrea restrepo rhodes (author of several books, most recently from Host Publications -- and this will ring you: “to want to be pealed by the hour, to say & say”), frequent restrepo rhodes coauthor Tala Khanmalek, and Carlo Acevedo, who is probably not the professional soccer player, but who’s to say? We contain multitudes. [Google Docs Poetry! Schedule]
[Bonus Peninsula Event] Yosimar Reyes, Alix Dick, and Antero Garcia in conversation, 6:30 pm, Fireside Books (Redwood City). Join the authors of The Cost of Being Undocumented and the Santa Clara Country Poet Laureate for this discussion of what we all know is getting more and more deathly true. [Google Docs]
[Bonus West Bay, Bonus Jeff Chang] Fist of Fury, 6:30pm, 4 Star Theater (West Bay). Waitlist only at this point! Go to the Wednesday event in the East Bay, obviously, but Jeff and W. Kamau will screen and discuss Bruce Lee’s breakout second film, 精武門, and that’s worth the BART trip and crossing your fingers. [JeffChang]
The Mastermind, 7pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). Go watch Kelly Reichardt’s deconstructed heist movie, starring everyone’s rodent boyfriend of 2024 (Josh O’Connor from Challengers) and the youngest Haim (Alana), who keeps finding herself in cool films. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival). [BAMPFA]
Chris Kraus’s The Four Spent the Day Together, 7pm, Oakstop Ballroom (Downtown). Come for the literary conversation, stay for the scene. Send ORB an email about the number of Keen Jaspers and niche baseball hats in the audience. Placing bets on whatever form of gossip Jessica manages to wrangle out of Chris Kraus. [LitQuake]
Also: Red Moon Rebirth Canal (Vietnamese-French-American Jazz) at Wyldflwr Arts (Mosswood) / In conversation with Roque Raquel Salas Rivera: (trans)lating anticolonial Caribbean poetics at Cal (Berkeley) / Judges and the Press: what courts could be doing now to promote public understanding at Cal (Berkeley) / White Zombie at Niles (Fremont)
Saturday, October 11
Melrose Neighborhood Tour with the Oakland General Plan Team, 9 AM, Fremont High School (Deep East). Oakland has a general plan, and the neighborhood groups trying to push out homeless people are generally leading the tours to inform it. Go and stir some shit or just listen and witness, depending on how hungry you are for conflict this morning. [Melrose 27X Neighborhood Council]
It Was Just an Accident, 2pm, BAMPFA (Cal). When Jafar Panahi isn't being imprisoned by the Iranian government, he spends his time winning every film award. This one got the Cannes Palme d'Or. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival) [BAMPFA]
[Bonus West Bay Event] In Conversation: Kija Lucas and Banu Subramaniam, 2 pm, SFAC Galleries (Get Off At Civic Center). Incredible East Bay photographer, curator, and Local Economy exhibitor Kija Lucas will be in conversation with feminist science studies scholar Subramaniam (author of Botany of Empire) on the occasion of the show To Bright Disturbances to discuss the ways in which plant science has been shaped by European colonialism and how they are subverting the system through their work. Moderated by Marthine Satris who might have written this. (SFAC)
Stranger By The Lake (Queer Classics), 3pm, The New Parkway (Uptown). Summertime. A cruising spot for men, tucked away on the shores of a lake. Luckily, a how-to book on having sex in a forest is available, so you can follow along (per Kasia’s always reliable recommendation: if you can’t read Polish, she gave it 4/5 stars on goodreads). [New Parkway]
The School: The Legacy of Hintil Ku’u Ča Film Screening and Discussion, 3 pm, Main Library (Downtown). This short documentary, "The School" tells the story of Hintil Ku'u Cǎ (House of Children), a Native American preschool/after-school program in Oakland, CA that was founded by a group of parents on Alcatraz Island during the 1970's occupation. The film will be followed by a discussion with the film's executive producer Leah Aguilera. If you don’t cry a little when you read the ORB vibe report of seeing a screening at OMCA, unsubscribe. [OPL]
Rockridge Book Club discusses No-no Boy by John Okada, 3:30 pm, Rockridge Branch OPL. Classic novel of Japanese internment literature. Read it, if not this week, then before long. [OPL]
Wayne Harris’s Drapetomania, 4:30pm, The Marsh (Berkeley). A one-person show about Harris’s journey to perform a piece about Martin Luther King Jr. for students in Palestine. Performance about performance, but apparently on arrival he realizes that “Oakland, California, is Jerusalem.” \O/ is interested. Also includes a post-show talkback with the Formerly Incarcerated People's Performance Project. [TheMarsh]
The Jaded Lovers Salon, 6:30pm, La Peña (Berkeley). This salon is a night of “intimate music and readings,” featuring some Bay–NYC collaborations. Expect readings about Black punk rock, novels-in-progress, and presumably anything a jaded lover might spontaneously say to a group of people. [La Peña]
WTF are we going to do about AI? 7pm, Bathers Library (Telegraph). A conversation between Stop Cop City and Stop AI, I suspect the answer is we should do the opposite of Not Stopping It. Masks required. [Insta]
The Message, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Nine‑year‑old Anika as she and her guardians, Myriam and Roger, drift through Argentina in a camper van, offering Anika’s services as an animal medium to anyone who asks. Let’s ask. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival) [BAMPFA]
[Bonus Edge of the Pacific Event] Freebox Fashion Show, 8 pm, Bolinas Community Center (Over the Mountain). Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Bolinas Freebox with a benefit for the Community Center’s Freebox fund to help with maintenance costs! It has long been a vital and loving community resource for so many and a beautiful way to recycle and show mutual aid. Poems, fashion, community, music. ORBs sometimes roll westward. [insta]
Also: Indigenous People’s Day PowWow and Market at MLK Park / Kronos Quartet at Cal Performances / Oakland’s Magic Kitchen at Fairyland / Socialist Movie Night: The Wanted 18 at Pine Knoll Park (The Lake) / Volunteer Work Day at Planting Justice (El Sobrante) / Sprouting Semillitas and Making Tortillas with Ms. Maribel at Lakeview Library (The Lake) / Storytelling with Brother Ben at BPL South (Berkeley) / Monster Drawing Rally 2025 at Southern Exposure (West Bay)
Sunday, October 12
Queer Family Farm Day, 10AM, Brown Girl Farms (Hayward). Are you queer? Do you have kids? Do you relish in community farm practices? Do you want to see an apple cider press in action? The population of people who answer “yes” to all those questions is quite robust here in Oakland, so get tickets to this extremely wholesome event before it hits capacity. [Brown Girl Farms]
Rank and File 1-3:30pm, Black Panther Party Museum, 1427 Broadway (Downtown). A workshop to celebrate the writers and artists that were rank and file members of the movement, exploring archival ephemera and then you’ll create poetry, prints, and buttons. [Insta]
Radical Moves, 1:30pm-3pm, Snow Park (Lake Merritt). An interactive public art and learning zone, with collective visioning, whatever that is, and whatever that is sounds dope. Stories of activism, radical change-makers, and successful social-change movements from every country in the world will be shared, celebrating the awareness of these movements, the people, and their contributions. [bafs]
The Reservoir, 2PM, Berkeley Rep (Berkeley). Catch this new play for the last show of its run at Berkeley Rep. Mostly because a play with reviews this bad just demands seeing the thing for yourself. Is it a sobriety tale so bad it’s good, or so bad it’s just, well, bad? [Berkeley Rep]
Living the Land, 4pm BAMPFA (Berkeley). An epic portrait of rural life in China’s Henan province. (Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival). [BAMPFA]
Poetry to find tenderness in these brutal times, 4-6pm Dream Farm Commons (Downtown) Naomi Quiñonez, Tureeda Ture Ade Mikell, Susana Praver-Pérez will return the sacred feminine to its rightful place. [insta]
Case 137, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). A science fiction film about what if the police policed the police? Or “a character-driven thriller in which a dedicated member of the IGPN—France’s internal affairs unit—will stop at nothing to find the cops who severely injured an innocent young man during a peaceful protest in Paris?” You decide. Mill Valley, etc. [BAMPFA]
Also: Undocumented Costs in Redwood City / Mending Workshop at DIY Museum / Choreography of Environments at Cal / “In the Hights” Literary Arts Festival in the Hights (the Hights)
