Tuesday, September 10, 2013

An American Family Disillusioned with America

Ann Levin of the Huffington Post reviews Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem, who visits Albany
tomorrow:

Jonathan Lethem's latest novel, "Dissident Gardens," is a tour de force, a brilliant, satiric journey through America's dissident history from 1930s-era communism to today's Occupy movement.

Its central character is Rose Zimmer, a staunch member of the American Communist Party whose affair with a black policeman draws the wrath of party apparatchiks. After getting booted from the party, she turns her energy to community organizing in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, a housing development built in the 1920s to provide well-designed, affordable apartments with communal gardens to the urban working class.

More in the Huff Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130909/us-book-review-dissident-gardens/?utm_hp_ref=style&ir=style

More about Lethem's visit to Albany on 9/11:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/lethem_jonathan13.html