Class Notes Digest
From artists and authors to a brewpub founder, see what your classmates have been up to
Gallery: Alumni Art
Gabriel Sosa (CAS’07) is an artist, a linguist, and an educator. His recent public art project, No es fácil/It ain’t easy, was a bilingual series of text-based billboards on view in Boston neighborhoods from July 2020 through January 2021. “These works subvert an iconic consumerist medium to bring messages of comfort, reflection, and solidarity to communities most impacted by the pandemic, many of which include high concentrations of Spanish-speaking immigrants,” Sosa wrote in December, adding that the billboard texts drew upon sayings from his Cuban American upbringing in Miami and the poetry of William Carlos Williams. Billboards went up in Roslindale (“It ain’t easy, but keep going”), Dorchester (“Esta vaina no es fácil, pero no te atormentes”), and Roxbury (“It ain’t easy, but hold on”). No es fácil/It ain’t easy was created with the support of the Now + There public art accelerator program. Learn more about the project at nowandthere.org/no-es-facil.
Roy Perkinson (GRS’70) had two oil paintings, On the York River and Sunset on the Road to Morse’s Pond, included in Fountain Street’s TENacious: A Reunion exhibition. The exhibition celebrated the Boston gallery’s 10th anniversary. Perkinson says On the York River was inspired by a trip to Maine, while Sunset on the Road to Morse’s Pond (above) has roots closer to his Wellesley, Mass., home. “That painting resulted from preliminary paintings in pastel, and it reminds me that ideas for paintings can come from right under your nose—even Rembrandt virtually never left his hometown.” See more of his work, including a video about the evolution of On the York River, at royperkinson.com.
Your Books
Featured Book
Jhumpa Lahiri (GRS’93, UNI’95,’97) wrote her third novel, Whereabouts, in Italian as Dove mi trovo and translated it into English. One of the most anticipated books of 2021, Whereabouts tells the story of an unnamed narrator—the novel contains no proper nouns—who feels lonely and lost in life.
“As always, Lahiri writes with subtlety and delicacy,” said Heller McAlpin of NPR. “There is movement in her prose that reflects the subtle movement in her narrator’s life. Whereabouts is the literary equivalent of slow cooking; it demands patience.”
The book is Lahiri’s first novel since 2013’s best-selling The Lowland, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Fiction:
Joel S. Gopen (DGE’57, CAS’59, SSW’61), The Rain Barrel; Joyce (Consolino) Gatta (CAS’64), In Hugger-Mugger: Dark Secrets and Forbidden Love in Renaissance England; Amy Weintraub (CAS’73), Temple Dancer; Jennifer Anne Moses (GRS’83), The Man Who Loved His Wife; Becky Bronson (GRS’86,’86), When North Becomes South; Elizabeth McCracken (CAS’88, GRS’88), The Souvenir Museum; Edward Schwarzschild (GRS’99), In Security; Kelly Fumiko Weiss (CAS’03), The Stories We Choose Not To Tell; Brittney Morris (CGS’11, CAS’13), The Cost of Knowing; Lisa Taddeo (GRS’17), Animal.
Nonfiction:
Sanford N. Katz (CAS’55), Family Law in America: Third Edition; John Torday (CAS’68), The Singularity of Nature: A Convergence of Biology, Chemistry and Physics; Tom Nichols (CAS’83), Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy; Rachel Carnell (GRS’89,’95), Backlash: Libel, Impeachment, and Populism in the Reign of Queen Anne; Jack David Eller (GRS’91), Trump and Political Theology: Unmaking Truth and Democracy; Julia Mayer (CAS’10), Painting Resilience: The Life and Art of Fred Terna.
Memoir:
Sayre Sheldon (GRS’61), Berkeley Street Cambridge: Stories from the Sixties; Peter Guralnick (CAS’67, GRS’68), Looking to Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing.
Poetry:
B. Amore (CAS’64), Journeys on the Wheel; Christine Lund (CAS’70), Me and Her Shadow; Jacob Strautmann (GRS’00), The Land of the Dead Is Open for Business; Chloe Martinez (GRS’07), Corner Shrine; Emily Mohn-Slate (GRS’08), The Falls.
On Screen
Alex Lo (CAS’20, Pardee’20) was a producer on Sky Blossom, a documentary film that explores the care that young adults are required to provide for their wounded military parents after they return home from service. Other BU alums involved in the project included Elena Bernstein (CAS’20, Pardee’20), Catherine Devlin (CAS’22), Simone Migliori (COM’20), and Adrien Solano (Questrom’20).
Samir Desai (CAS’96), Hyung Soo Pak (CAS’96), and Van Ditthavong (Questrom’96) worked on the 2020 film All Roads to Pearla. Desai and Pak were executive producers and Ditthavong was the writer and director.
Diversifying Museums and Libraries, Preserving Literary History
Emma Kalff (CAS’15) and Sandra Soto (Wheelock’16) cofounded Libraries for Liberation in 2020. The organization purchases books that raise awareness of systemic racism from BIPOC-owned bookstores and distributes them to communities across the United States through a network of volunteers. They hope the books that they distribute will facilitate community conversations that lead to connection, healing, and liberatory action. Visit librariesforliberation.com.
Melanee C. Harvey (GRS’17), an assistant professor and coordinator of art history at Howard University, Washington, D.C., has helped launch a multiyear undergraduate paid internship program that aims to make museums and other arts organizations more diverse and inclusive. The pilot program is “for students from historically Black colleges and universities and other institutions that serve populations that are underrepresented in the museum field,” according to its founding partners, Howard and the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. Harvey was the center’s Paul Mellon Guest Scholar for the 2020–2021 academic year.
Alise Perault (GRS’21) is a program associate for the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebr. She previously interned with the organization as part of her master’s degree in preservation studies. “Willa Cather wrote 12 novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning One of Ours,” says Perault. “As program associate, I lead tours of the historic sites associated with Willa Cather’s life and writing, coordinate programming for our Red Cloud Opera House, curate exhibits for our gallery, and help to organize our annual spring conference and biannual international seminar.”
Cheers!
Nahum Laventhal (CAS’77) of New Orleans, La., opened Bywater Brew Pub in October 2020 after retiring from staff counsel at Nationwide and 38 years as a lawyer. He launched the pub, which combines a brewery with a restaurant serving a Viet-Cajun menu, with his son, Dylan. Friends can email Nahum at nahum.laventhal@gmail.com.