Fleurs du Mal Magazine
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21% BTW
EEN WAARDELOOS IDEE
NEW DUTCH GOVERNMENT
intends to raise tax on books
from 9 to 21%.
Readers and writers
will not accept this.
STICHTING CPNB: De voorgenomen hogere btw op (kinder)boeken zal leiden tot een forse prijsverhoging. Een slechte zaak, want het Nederlandse boek is dé basis van lees- en taalvaardigheid. We roepen daarom iedereen op de petitie te tekenen tegen het voornemen om de btw op boeken met 12% te verhogen.
Teken en verspreid de petitie en ga naar www.boekenpetitie.nl
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2007 – 2022 • fleursdumal.nl • 15 years
Magazine for art & literature
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A Washington Post Style editor’s fascinating and irresistible look back on the Miss America pageant as it approaches its 100th anniversary.
The sash. The tears. The glittering crown. And of course, that soaring song. For all of its pomp and kitsch, the Miss America pageant is indelibly written into the American story of the past century.
From its giddy origins as a summer’s-end tourist draw in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, it blossomed into a televised extravaganza that drew tens of millions of viewers in its heyday and was once considered the highest honor that a young woman could achieve.
For two years, Washington Post reporter and editor Amy Argetsinger visited pageants and interviewed former winners and contestants to unveil the hidden world of this iconic institution.
There She Was spotlights how the pageant survived decades of social and cultural change, collided with a women’s liberation movement that sought to abolish it, and redefined itself alongside evolving ideas about feminism.
For its superstars—Phyllis George, Vanessa Williams, Gretchen Carlson—and for those who never became household names, Miss America was a platform for women to exercise their ambitions and learn brutal lessons about the culture of fame. Spirited and revelatory, There She Was charts the evolution of the American woman, from the Miss America catapulted into advocacy after she was exposed as a survivor of domestic violence to the one who used her crown to launch a congressional campaign; from a 1930s winner who ran away on the night of her crowning to a present-day rock guitarist carving out her place in this world. Argetsinger dissects the scandals and financial turmoil that have repeatedly threatened to kill the pageant—and highlights the unexpected sisterhood of Miss Americas fighting to keep it alive.
Amy Argetsinger is an editor and writer for The Washington Post. “There She Was” is her first book.
There She Was:
The Secret History of Miss America
by Amy Argetsinger
Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
September 7, 2021
Language : English
Hardcover : 384 pages
ISBN-10 : 1982123397
ISBN-13 : 978-1982123390
$ 23.49
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BANNED BOOKS WEEK
September 26 – October 2 for the 2021
celebration of the right to read!
Across the United States, divisive book bans and censorious threats have taken hold in schools, academia, and the public square, particularly in regards to books that center racism, history, and diversity. This has raised questions: Who is allowed to be heard? Who decides? This year, as we celebrate Banned Books Week, PEN America uplifts the books, authors, teachers, and writers who insist on telling stories and examining history with truth, honesty, and complexity.
In an effort to unpack these current challenges, PEN America is hosting a series of virtual and in-person events. These events will offer a clear-eyed view of the current assaults on the freedom to express, the freedom to read, and the freedom to learn.
Join PEN America Today
Defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture.
Read more about what PEN America is doing to fight back against book bans during 2021 Banned Books Week.
BANNED BOOKS WEEK
September 26 – October 2 for the 2021
celebration of the right to read!
Banned Books Week is the annual celebration of the freedom to read. The event is sponsored by a coalition of organizations dedicated to free expression, including American Booksellers Association; American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of University Presses; Authors Guild; Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE); Freedom to Read Foundation; Index on Censorship; National Coalition Against Censorship; National Council of Teachers of English; PEN America; People For the American Way Foundation; and Project Censored. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Banned Books Week also receives generous support from DKT Liberty Project and Penguin Random House.
Read more about the 2021 Banned Books Week.
→ https://bannedbooksweek.org/
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This week, the Ministry of Justice in Belarus sent a letter indicating they are seeking to liquidate our sister organization PEN Belarus, which for years has supported writers and free expression in the country. It comes as the country’s authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenka continues to crack down on all those who dissent. Show our colleagues and friends at PEN Belarus that they are not alone—and that we rally to support the freedom to write wherever and whenever it comes under threat.
Please join us and take action
Click here:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/i-support-pen-belarus?source=email&
Show your support for PEN Belarus.
Thank You!
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. They champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Their mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
Founded in 1922, PEN America is the largest of the more than 100 centers worldwide that make up the PEN International network. PEN America works to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others.
More information on PEN America, click here
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Guillotine traverses desert landscapes cut through by migrants, the grief of loss, betrayal’s lingering scars, the border itself—great distances in which violence and yearning find roots.
Through the voices of undocumented immigrants, border patrol agents, and scorned lovers, award-winning poet Eduardo C. Corral writes dramatic portraits of contradiction, survival, and a deeply human, relentless interiority. With extraordinary lyric imagination, these poems wonder about being unwanted or renounced. What do we do with unrequited love? Is it with or without it that we would waste away?
In the sequence “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel,” with Corral’s seamless integration of Spanish and English, poems curve around the surfaces upon which they are written, overlapping like graffiti left by those who may or may not have survived crossing the border. A harrowing second collection, Guillotine solidifies Corral’s place in the expanding ecosystem of American poetry.
The astonishing second collection by the author of Slow Lightning, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize
Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Slow Lightning, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize. He was a founding fellow of the CantoMundo Writers Conference, and recipient of a Whiting Award. He teaches at North Carolina State University.
Guillotine.
Poems
Eduardo C. Corral
ISBN: 978-1-64445-030-7
Format: Paperback
Publication Date: 8/4/20
Subject: Poetry
Pages 72
Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Price $16.00
# new poetry
Guillotine.
Poems by
Eduardo C. Corral
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Nasrin Sotoudeh and her son
In prisons across Iran, there have been people who have tested positive for COVID-19. This raises grave concerns for prisoners in Iran, including human rights lawyer and prisoner of conscience Nasrin Sotoudeh. Take action and demand she is released now.
After two grossly unfair trails, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer, was sentenced to 38 years and six months in prison and 148 lashes because of her work defending women’s rights and protesting against Iran’s discriminatory and degrading forced veiling laws. Nasrin has dedicated her life to peaceful human rights works.
Now, in prisons across Iran, there have been confirmed cases of COVID-19. This raises grave fears that prisoners, like Nasrin, are at risk of contracting the virus. Prisoners are at particular risk because they are unable to take the same social distancing and hygiene measures as those outside of prison to protect themselves.
Across Iran, prisoners have pleaded with officials to address overcrowded, unhygienic and unsanitary conditions that put them at greater risk of COVID-19 infections, raising alarms about the authorities’ failure to sufficiently protect prison populations from the spread of the virus. Some prisoners have been denied adequate medical care, leaving them at greater risk from the virus if contracted.
Nasrin is among the hundreds of prisoners of conscience jailed in Iran. No one should spend a single day in prison for peacefully exercising their rights.
Call on the Supreme Leader of Iran to release Nasrin Sotoudeh immediately and unconditionally and for her sentences to be quashed without delay.
Iran: Free Nasrin Sotoudeh
Link: action amnesty international
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UN should demand release of jailed
journalists amid COVID-19 pandemic
CPJ is calling on several UN special mandate holders to join its effort to secure the release of all jailed journalists globally in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 250 journalists are behind bars for their work, according to CPJ’s most recent prison census.
• Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) – 11 April 2020
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on governments to release all journalists from their prisons. On behalf of more than 250 journalists behind bars, we call on authorities to free these political prisoners immediately and unconditionally.
For journalists jailed in countries affected by the virus, freedom is now a matter of life and death. Imprisoned journalists have no control over their surroundings, cannot choose to isolate, and are often denied necessary medical care.
The World Health Organization states that “People deprived of their liberty, and those living or working in enclosed environments in their close proximity, are likely to be more vulnerable to the COVID-19 disease than the general population.”
Global press freedom and human rights organizations are calling on world leaders to immediately release all imprisoned journalists. Add your voice to the call and sign our petition today!
The Committee to Protect Journalists submitted a call to several U.N. special mandate holders yesterday encouraging them to join CPJ’s effort to secure the release of all jailed journalists globally in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
# See here website CPJ’s petition
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Russian activist and artist, Yulia Tsvetkova, is facing prosecution and harassment for defending women’s and LGBTI rights.
She has been under house arrest since 22 November, under absurd charges of “production and dissemination of pornography” for her drawings of the female body. She is facing up to six years in prison if convicted. Yulia Tsvetkova is a prisoner of conscience and must be immediately and unconditionally released.
Yulia Tsvetkova is an LGBTI and women’s rights activist, artist and stage director, from Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the Russian Far East.
She was detained on 20 November 2019 and put on house arrest two days later, after being charged with the “production and dissemination of pornographic materials”, for making body positive drawings of the female body and sharing them on social media.
Her drawings included pictures of female reproductive organs, and she shared them online as part of her women’s empowerment campaign.
On the day of her arrest, police searched Yulia’s apartment and the children’s educational club where she worked previously. The police seized her electronic devices, documents, and brochures on gender issues. Yulia later said that during the search police officers referred to her as a “lesbian, sex trainer and propagandist leader”.
Yulia has been the target of an overtly homophobic campaign since March 2019, when she was forced to leave Merak, the amateur youth theatre company she worked at, after police launched an investigation into alleged “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors”.
The investigation was launched in reaction to Yulia’s anti-bullying, anti-discrimination play, Blue and Pink.
On 11 December 2019 Yulia was found guilty of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors”, and fined 50,000 rubles (approximately 600 GBP), for serving as the administrator of two LGBTI online communities on the popular Russian social media site, VKontakte.
Both of the online communities were properly marked as “18+”, as required by Russian law. Even under the confines of the homophobic Russian “gay propaganda” legislation, the “offence” should only be valid if the “propaganda” material is targeted at people under the age of 18.
On 17 January, Yulia informed the media that new proceedings had been opened against her, under the same Article of the Code of Administrative Offences that she had previously been charged under. This time she was being prosecuted for posting a drawing she made depicting two same-sex couples with child on social media, alongside the statement, “Family is where love is. Support LGBT+ families”.
She published the drawing in support of a same-sex couple who were forced to flee Russia with their adopted children after authorities threatened to remove their children from their custody.
# visit Website Amnesty International UK for more information and urgent actions
# support amnesty international
# take urgent action now
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Tujan al-Bukhaiti is a 17-year-old Yemeni refugee. She is being tried in Jordan on charges of ‘blasphemy’ and ‘insulting religious figures’ over her social media posts, including posts by her dad that she has shared. Stopped from going to school
On 11 December 2019 Tujan’s school threatened to expel her for sharing ‘beliefs that do not represent the school’ on her Facebook page. When she refused their ultimatum they banned her from attending classes.
A week later she was brought in by police for questioning and a statement was taken without her parents or lawyer there. This is illegal and violates her right to a fair trial.
When she was questioned she says that an officer went through her Facebook page insulting various members of her family.
Tujan has been made to go to court three times for her trial and each time the date has been postponed. She is facing potentially a month in prison and a lifetime criminal record just for expressing her views. If Jordan allows the trial to go ahead they will be breaking international law by violating her right to freedom of expression. This young woman should not be punished just for speaking her mind.
Tujan is just a teenager. As a refugee, she’s already been through so much. Jordan should drop this case immediately and let her get on with her studies.
Please send an email to Jordan’s Minister of Justice .
# More information on website of Amnesty International UK
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Rebellen en dwarsdenkers
De 85ste Boekenweek staat in het teken van hen die ons voorstellingsvermogen vergroten: de rebellen en dwarsdenkers. Het lezen van boeken zet namelijk aan 
tot nadenken, zodat lezers begrip ontwikkelen voor anderen en minder vasthouden aan vooroordelen (bron: KVB Boekwerk, De impact van het boek). Van de dromerige dwarsdenker die veilig thuis afreist naar een andere wereld tot de rebel die zijn messcherpe pen als wapen gebruikt tegen de status quo. In de literatuur is er ruimte voor al die geluiden. Het lef van schrijvers om taboes te doorbreken en een steen in de vijver te gooien is van levensbelang voor onze samenleving. Daarom koesteren we de vrijheid die door schrijvers genomen wordt om tegen de stroom in te werken, om dwars en vervelend te zijn, onaangepast en onafhankelijk.
Een greep uit rebelse boeken en dwarse schrijvers
De rebellen van de literatuur hebben altijd ons denken beïnvloed: stoere, onorthodoxe, eigengereide auteurs als Multatuli, Annie M.G. Schmidt, Willem Frederik Hermans, Astrid 
Roemer, Dimitri Verhulst en Charlotte Mutsaers hebben werelden geopend. Rebelse personages en dwarse karakters zoals Don Quichot, Madame Bovary, Tommy Wieringa’s Joe Speedboot, Esther Gerritsens Roxy en Hava uit Aafke Romeijns Concept M houden een spiegel voor en laten ons nadenken over wie wij zijn. Schrijvers als Jan Cremer, Connie Palmen, Anna Blaman en Jan Wolkers zoeken grenzen van de literatuur op en verleggen ze. Boeken kunnen weerstand oproepen, kunnen verboden worden en verbrand, maar de kracht van de woorden laat zich niet temmen. Nabokovs Lolita, Houellebecqs Onderworpen of Erasmus’ Lof der zotheid hebben onder vuur gelegen, maar zijn inmiddels onmiskenbare oriëntatiepunten in het literaire landschap. Om de steeds veranderende wereld om ons heen te begrijpen, hebben we dwarsdenkers en ordescheppers nodig. Renate Rubinstein en Anton de Kom hebben ons bewust gemaakt van onze oogkleppen. Ook door non-fictie prikkelen, stimuleren en scherpen we onze geest. Het maatschappelijk debat op de meest uiteenlopende onderwerpen wordt bepaald door dappere en dwarse denkers: Dick Swaab en Rosanne Hertzberger, Rutger Bregman en Joris Luyendijk, Anousha Nzume en Paul Scheffer.
• De 85ste Boekenweek vindt plaats van zaterdag 7 t/m zondag 15 maart 2020
• Het boekenweekgeschenk is dit jaar geschreven door Annejet van der Zijl: Leon & Juliette. Een liefdesgeschiedenis
• Özcan Akyol schrijft dit jaar het Boekenweekessay: Generaal zonder leger.
• Ellen Deckwitz schrijft Boekenweekgedicht 2020
# Meer informatie op website Boekenweek
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