Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist
Published by USC Bedrosian Center on
Featuring Raphael Bostic, Matt Gainer, William G. Resh, and Danielle Williams
Sunil Yapa’s debut novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, returns us to 1999 during the WTO protests in Seattle. Taking on multiple perspectives during the first day of the meeting/protests, Yapa brings us stories that get to the nature of power versus empathy in democracy, in civil society. He said in an interview with Bethanne Patrick, “Empathy is a profound act of imagination and human connection. In fiction, we imagine ourselves into other people’s experiences. Of course, another word for that is ‘reading.'”
This fascinating book imagines what it means to be empathetic within the institutional violence of our system and the violence humans can commit against each other. Listen to our discussion about power and the necessity of protest within our democratic structure, and how protests should, and can, peacefully engage to solve the world’s “wicked problems.”
To listen to the Bedrosian Book Club Podcast discussion of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist click the orange arrow in the Soundcloud player at the top of this post. Or you can download it and subscribe through Soundcloud or iTunes!
Read Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond along with us, and listen to our discussion on March 28, 2016.
This highly anticipated (and star reviewed) work is a study of eight families facing eviction in Milwaukee. “Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.”
We’ll be bringing back the same guests from our discussion of The Great Inversion, for a look at what perhaps is the cost of demographic shifts in an inherently unequal society.
Next Month …
