In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century from the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty, translated by Wong May
Recommended by Stephen Marche, author of The Next Civil War and host of Gloves Off
In In the Same Light, Wong May presents Tang Dynasty poetry as a living political record—written largely by exiles, refugees, monks, officials, and laborers navigating war, famine, displacement, and state collapse. These poems once functioned as a shared civic language, traded in markets and posted in public spaces. Read today, they feel uncannily contemporary: a reminder that cultural survival and collective memory often endure longest not in policy, but in art. “The poetry is a thousand years old,” Stephen tells us, “but incredibly resonant about the madness of a civilization in radical decline.”
The Wayfinder, by Adam Johnson
Recommended by Jeff Chang, social historian and author of Water Mirror Echo
Set in pre-contact Polynesia, Adam Johnson’s gripping novel follows a young girl drawn into an empire on the brink of collapse, where ritual, violence, and loyalty determine survival. Through myth, oral history, and political intrigue, Johnson examines empire, migration, myth, and moral compromise, asking what communities owe one another when the future is uncertain—and when the promises of power begin to rot. Jeff calls it “the kind of widescreen, worlds-spanning tale that used to captivate us when we were kids, but with a lot to say about the times we live in right now.”
Black in Blues, by Imani Perry
Recommended by Titus Kaphar, award-winning painter and director of Exhibiting Forgiveness
In Black in Blues, National Book Award winner Imani Perry offers a luminous meditation on the color blue—and its deep, enduring entanglement with Black history, culture, and feeling. Moving fluidly across time and form, Perry traces blue from the indigo-dyed West African cloth traded for human life in the 16th century, to the blues as a foundational American art form born at the crossroads of suffering and joy. Drawing on history, art, music, and her own life, she reveals how blue holds both grief and possibility, melancholy and transcendence. The result is a work of cultural criticism as intimate as it is expansive.
Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy
Recommended by Kathleen Belew, Northwestern history professor and author of Bring the War Home
Set on a remote island near Antarctica, Wild Dark Shore explores what happens when environmental collapse turns stewardship into a political burden few are willing to carry. As a small family safeguards the world’s largest seed bank amid rising seas and intensifying storms, the novel links intimate human relationships to global questions about climate responsibility, scarcity, and who gets to decide what gets saved. With mounting secrecy and moral compromise, McConaghy dramatizes how ecological crisis forces individuals into the same impossible choices now confronting nations.
All We Want Is Everything, by Soraya Chemaly
Recommended by Sarah Kaplan, founding Director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at Rotman School of Management
All We Want Is Everything is “an archeological dig into the forces of the patriarchy,” Sarah says, showing “how they are present in all the systems that surround us, and how we might begin to resist.” Rather than framing male supremacy as a matter of individual prejudice, Soraya Chemaly exposes it as a political and economic system that organizes power by pitting men against one another while exploiting women and marginalized communities as resources. Moving fluidly from intimate relationships to global politics, the book offers the necessary tools for building more just and sustainable futures.
Big ideas don’t live in silos.
Taken together, these books remind us that politics doesn’t simply live on paper. It lives in poems, stories, art, and humans ourselves. Whether tracing empires in decline, the afterlives of color and culture, or the structures that shape who holds power and who pays the price, each of these works offers tools for thinking more clearly about the world we’re in—and the one we still have a chance to build. Interested in hearing big ideas like these explored live, on stage? Get in touch to book these Lavin speakers for your 2026 event!
