Noted author, poet, photographer and activist, Margaret Randall, will visit George Mason University this fall to deliver several free public lectures and share her most recent works of poetry and non-fiction.
On Monday, October 21st at 7 PM in the Mason Hall Atrium there will be a large reception to welcome Ms. Randall to campus and for her to sign copies of her recently released book, Che on My Mind. After the reception Ms. Randall will read from Che on My Mind and reflect on her life and the legacy of Che Guevara’s life and death.
Margaret Randall participated in the Mexican student movement of 1968 and eventually was forced to leave the country. She arrived in Cuba in 1969, less than two years after Che's death, and lived there until 1980. She became friends with several of Che's family members, friends, and compatriots. In Che on My Mind she reflects on his relationships with his family and fellow insurgents, including Fidel Castro. She is deeply admiring of Che's integrity and charisma and frank about what she sees as his strategic errors. Randall concludes by reflecting on the inspiration and lessons that Che's struggles might offer early twenty-first-century social justice activists and freedom fighters.
On Tuesday, October 22nd, Ms. Randall will hold two additional events in Johnson Center Room F:
At 1:30 pm, Ms. Randall will host a Conversation with Students and Faculty about her remarkable story: her life in New York as art liaison for MOMA, her move to Mexico in 1961 to launch with Sergio Mondragón El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn, perhaps the most important cultural journal of the sixties and seventies; her years in Cuba, then in Nicaragua, her case Randall v. Ed Meese, Att. General. This will be in the question/answer format.
Later that same afternoon at 4:30 pm, Ms. Randall will read from her new poetry collection The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones, which will be followed by a discussion and questions from the audience. This poetry collection is about connectivity and suggests that humankind is linked by its concerns for global human rights and a sustainable global climate. Named for a root system that connects seemingly separate plants, like a stand of aspen trees, this compilation seeks to celebrate common human roots.
For more information on Randall and her schedule, go to www.margaretrandall.org.
Sponsored by Women and Gender Studies, University Life, The Office of the Provost, Philosophy Department, New Century College, Latin American Studies, Global Interdisciplinary Programs, English Department, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and Cultural Studies.
September 20, 2013