Synopses & Reviews
More Than Things is a collection of essays on a variety of political, cultural, and literary issues, all linked by Margaret Randalls attention to power: its use, misuse, and impact on how we live our lives. There are texts on sex, fashion, food, LGBT rights, automobiles, forgiving, womens self-image, writing, books, and more. Two of the essays provide glimpses into present-day Cuba and Tunisia. She reflects on her family; her romantic partners; and the revolutionaries, writers, artists, and activists she has known personally and admired: Roque Dalton, Meridel LeSueur, and Haydée Santamaría.
Randalls writings move in unexpected directions, evoked by the “things” and ideas in her life: objects picked up around the world, her childrens names, family heirlooms, artistic practices, dreams, poems, and memories. Elegantly weaving together the personal and the political, More Than Things is a tour de force by one of Americas most formidable and elegiac writers and political activists.
Review
“Margaret Randall is one of our cherished veteran mavericks and an intellectual of global consequence. With astonishing courage and self-criticality Randall has sought ‘to restore language twisted by our sociopolitical systems in order to provide for us ‘a dignity that documents and empowers. . . .
More Than Things recounts a commitment to art and to the examined life as a quest for knowledge produced from the shockwaves of history.”—Roberto Tejada, author of
Full Foreground and
National Camera: Photography and Mexicos Image Environment Roberto Tejada
Review
“With this amazing collection of memory and celebration, we can all benefit from Margaret Randalls brilliant, courageous, and redefining life of activism and keen observation. Everyone interested in our ongoing journey for womens rights, peace and poetry, justice and freedom, dignity and human rights for all will rush to read and gift this important, galvanizing book.”—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of The Declassified Eisenhower and the Eleanor Roosevelt volumes Blanche Wiesen Cook
About the Author
Margaret Randall is a writer and photographer. She has written dozens of books of memoir, poetry, oral history, and essays, in addition to translations, edited anthologies, and photography books. Her most recent works include
To Change the World: My Years in Cuba, First Laugh: Essays 2000-2009 (Nebraska, 2011),
Che on My Mind, and
The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones.