Incandescent poet Luis Rodriguez tomorrow at Jane Addams Hull House

Poet & Activist, *Luis Rodriguez* at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

*Wednesday, March 16, 2011*
5:30 PM Reception; 6:00 PM Reading 

Residents’ Dining Hall
 800 South Halsted Street
 *Co-sponsored with The Poetry Foundation*

 *Reading*
 Join us on March 16 for a special reading by activist and award-winning
 writer and poet, Luis Rodriguez.

 Luis will recite works from his extraordinary collection, as well as a new
 poem commissioned by the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum for the* Alternative
 Labeling Project*, a new series that transgresses and challenges the way
 we think about objects and artifacts and the extraordinary stories they
 tell.

 *About Luis Rodriguez*
 Luis J. Rodriguez is one of the leading Chicano writers in the country,
 with 14 published books in poetry, memoir, fiction, nonfiction, and
 children’s literature. His poetry has won the Poetry Center Book Award, the
 PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the Paterson Poetry Book Prize,
 among other accolades. *Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.*,
 his 1993 memoir of gang life, has sold more than 300,000 copies; it received
 the Carl Sandburg Literary Award and a *Chicago Sun-Times* Book Award, and
 was designated a *New York Times* Notable Book. His latest poetry
 collection, *My Nature Is Hunger: New & Selected Poems*, appeared in 2005
 from Curbstone         Press/Rattle Editions. Rodriguez helped found
 Chicago’s Guild Complex, Tia Chucha Press, and Rock A Mole Productions,
 which organizes arts festivals in Los Angeles. He is renowned for his work
 in gang intervention.

 *Alternative Labeling Project*
 Can a common museum label—so often the omniscient voice that provides
 factual evidence  that identifies artifacts and objects in a museum's
 collection—sensually engage us, inspire revolution and reform, or provide
 pleasure and comfort?

 Can a museum label be a poem, an essay, or piece of music?

 The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum asks these questions in its new series of
 Alternative Labels that presents diverse voices and encourages visitors to
 view history from a fresh perspective.

 We invited Luis Rodriguez, one of the country's leading Chicano writers,
 the International Contemporary Ensemble, a vibrant, cutting-edge new music
 ensemble, and Terri Kapsalis, a writer and performer, to choose artifacts
 from our collection and compose labels that challenge and provoke. For the
 final part in the series, visitors will be invited to exercise their voices
 and participate by creating their own alternative label for an object in our
 collection.

 These labels, non-traditional in format and presentation, will be placed
 throughout the museum over the next few months to provide alternative
 encounters that will introduce visitors in fresh ways to the extraordinary
 history of the Hull-House Settlement.

 We are thrilled to be co-sponsoring this event with the Poetry Foundation,
 publisher of *Poetry *magazine. Hull-House and the Poetry Foundation have
 a long history that begins with Harriet Monroe, American editor, scholar,
 literary critic, poet and patron of the arts, who founded *Poetry *magazine
 in 1912. Monroe lived briefly as a resident at Hull-House, where she
 connected with Jane Addams and became one of Addams’ primary readers and
 literary peers. The two women also belonged to the Society of Midland
 Authors, an elite literary circle, which included important modern writers
 like Clarence Darrow, Hamlin Garland, Carl Sandburg, and Lorado Taft.
  Lisa Yun Lee, Ph.D.
 Director, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
 http://www.hullhousemuseum.org
 312.413.5358>312.413.5358
 800 South Halsted, MC 051
 Chicago, IL 60607