User Profile

Steven Ray

stevenray@sfba.club

Joined 2 years ago

I’m interested in a multitude of things, including social justice, socialism, history, poetry, magical realism (fiction), capitalism, race and class struggle, plus stuff like wine, baseball and music.

So mostly non-fiction, though I read maybe two novels per year and maybe one poetry collection.

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Steven Ray's books

Currently Reading

2026 Reading Goal

Steven Ray has read 0 of 18 books.

Czesław Miłosz: The Captive Mind (1990) No rating

A study of the psychological effects of totalitarianism, and how those under it's thumb adapted …

The first of at least two books I'll read this year to help educate myself about totalitarianism and it's effects on citizens existing under it's thumb. It's also the book for which this Nobel Prize winner is most well-known.

Allen Ginsberg: Howl and Other Poems (2001)

"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg …

So great, so historic, so necessary

A short but oh so great collection, including the historic poem which gives the book it's name. In this reread, I discovered that I liked the penultimate poem ('Wild Orphan') almost as much as Howl itself. A nice read to finish up the year.

Rabindranath Tagore: Gitanjali (1997, Scribner Poetry)

Song Offerings A collection of prose translations made by the author from the original Bengali.Please …

Serene prose, just not for me

Beautiful, serene prose. The poems in this collection are largely spiritual / religious in nature, and that mutes my attraction to them as I'm not particularly inclined to believe in a higher power. I know that he wrote other poems and songs, so I might do some research to see what else is available.

Jeffery R. Webber: The Last Day of Oppression, and the First Day of the Same (Paperback, 2017, Haymarket Books)

Throughout the 2000s Latin America formed the leading edge of antineoliberal resistance. But what is …

The ebbs and flows of Latin American popular struggle

An excellent education on the recent history of class struggle and popular / indigenous movements in Latin America, charting their effects, their interaction with the leftist governments they helped elect and ultimately their absorption into and emasculation by the state apparatus. Chapters taking deep dives into Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela provided great detail, and the literary criticism of George Ciccariello-Maher's 'We Created Chavez' convinced me to acquire that text as well to further my understanding.