The effects of drugs and incarceration on communities and children, or Bernie Sanders? Two book talks on Tuesday, January 19th are sure to draw intrigue:
Busboys and Poets Brookland, at 6:30 p.m.: Tony Lewis Jr. will discuss his book Slugg: A Boy’s Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Hanover Place Press, $15). Lewis had a pampered childhood in D.C. and Maryland thanks to his dad—a major drug kingpin, who by age 19 had made more than a million dollars selling crack. In 1989, a sting operation resulted in Lewis Sr.’s arrest, conviction, and life sentence in prison.
Slugg is a memoir (named for Lewis’s childhood nickname) that tells the before-and-after story of life surrounding the arrest. Particularly after, we see the downfall of a family into poverty and violence during one of D.C.’s most drug-fueled and murder-torn eras.
Lewis, and other children like him at the time, had to cope with these circumstances. They had to make choices about what to do going forward: survive through a criminal way of life, or somehow resist the system of their surroundings.
Slugg is personal and engrossing, and brings the human perspective to what seemed like abstract problems to many.. The author notes that some of the issues he describes were raised by the Black Lives Matter movement after the book was written. While he did not rewrite his narrative through that lens, we can expect some comments on it during his Tuesday talk.
Politics and Prose, at 7 p.m.: Washingtonian editor-at-large Harry Jaffe will talk about his new unauthorized biography of Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Why Bernie Sanders Matters (Regan Arts, $18). Jaffe started his career as a journalist for a Vermont newspaper in 1974 while Sanders was an aspiring politico in the state, giving Jaffe particular insight into the rising Democratic star.
Why is the biography unauthorized? Sanders “really doesn’t like to talk about himself” or talk to reporters, Jaffe told Chuck Todd in a Meet The Press interview. So, a biography of the man who could be president did not yet exist. To write the book, Jaffe used published materials and talked with Sanders’ family (including his wife), friends, colleagues, and staff.
Why Bernie Sanders Matters follows Sanders through his early life, as a Jewish kid in Brooklyn who would bounce around in different jobs and eventually spend summers in Vermont. He bought property there — no house, just land with “a couple of shacks” — and became a hippie, though he’s said he was never part of the drug culture. He led the radical, anti-war Liberty Union party before being elected Burlington’s mayor, then U.S. House representative, then U.S. Senator.
It all leads up to the 2016 Presidential race; so far, a good one for “outsider” candidates. Though Sanders has spent more than 30 years in politics, he has held views outside the mainstream since the 1970’s. As Jaffe explains, Sanders has always fought for principles of democratic socialism (not to be confused with regular socialism), but the way that’s been received by voters has shifted with the times.
The up-to-date book covers events as recent as the 2015 Democratic primary debates. It gives an unprecedented look into Sanders’s past, present, and yet-to-be-determined future.
Both events are free and open to the public.
