This volume features the work of Iranian poet and visual artist Sohrab Sepehri (1928–80) in conversation with that of James Baldwin. Sepehri's work was largely composed during the repressive reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1953–79), who was placed in power by the Americans after they overthrew the legitimately elected President Mohammad Mossadegh. Harsh repression eventually led to a popular revolution and the overthrow of the shah. Throughout his life, Sephri‘s works, written and visual, presented a poetics of love; love understood not as emotion but as a way of knowing. This type of love cuts through cultural and political barriers, allowing those who experience it to encounter the sacredness of other people and of all creation. Love as knowledge opens up a vision of a future in which the dignity of each person is upheld and all of creation is respected and treated accordingly. To demonstrate that such a radical, transformative experience of love is not culturally limited but rather a potentially universal human experience, Davary connects Sepehri's work to the work of James Baldwin (1924–87), who, embedded in the racial violence of the US, arrived at a similar awareness of a deeper love as the only path to fundamental social revolution. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews

The book provides an important window into how participation in local politics takes place in contemporary Cuba. Its nuanced understanding of on-the-ground participatory governance provides a thoughtful counter argument to notions of Cuba as an inflexible totalitarian society. This study depicts a people enmeshed in lively political participation and with the ability to make local-level change. Grounded in the history and legacy of Cubans refashioning politics from below, James A. Baer’s critical engagement with hard questions about its contemporary reality illuminates the everyday forms of citizen engagement that keep Cuban society running today.

Sara Kozameh, University of California, San Diego