During today’s politically confusing times, students have looked for guidance in order understand and cope with the current situation. Professor of English and member of the Los Angeles Review of Books Michelle Chihara has a few books in mind for her students. During an interview on the popular public radio program AirTalk, Chihara spoke about how unusual it is for a student to ask for extra reading assignments, but nevertheless has a few titles she’s encouraging them to read.
One book she recommends is Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time by Ira Katznelson, which takes a look at the pivotal American era that shows how much democracy struggled to stay away from fascism and communism. Chihara believes that we need to understand the past and where we came from to fully understand what’s going on in our current political climate. She explains that she does this for her students through both fiction and nonfiction works. The books she recommends to Poets, like 1984 by George Orwell tells a story on how to deal with governments that heavily survey their citizens while giving insight to how language affects our politics.
Click here to listen to the full interview.
