The Third Annual Cheuse Lecture of Ideas
Tuesday, April 1, 2025 6:30 PM EDT
Stacy C Sherwood Community Center
Extra{ordinary} Courage:
the politics of language and masculinity
by Dinaw Mengestu
In the larger sense, his work shows over and over how the way we treat each other conveys a sense of the value we place on others and, as a result, the value others derive of themselves. How what they think they are worth in the eyes of the world informs their own sense of self-worth, even to the point of life and death.
In 2023, the Cheuse Center launched its first free public lecture of ideas to enrich public life. This year Dinaw Mengestu will deliver the 3rd public lecture on April 1, 2025 at 6:30 p.m., at the Stacy C Sherwood Community Center in Fairfax, Virginia. Mengestu will deliver the 2025 Cheuse Lecture titled: Extra{ordinary} Courage: the politics of language and masculinity. By exploring courage, Mengestu will present us with his ideas on the politics of language and masculinity. Through his work the multitudes of men and women at work in the cities and small towns in America become personal and quietly heroic. Mengestu is the author of four novels, including Someone Like Us (Knopf 2024), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007), all New York Times Notable Books. A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, among other honors. The lecture is brought to you by the Cheuse Center, Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL), the City of Fairfax & Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI). This lecture series is made possible by the generous support of the Fairfax Library Foundation, and William Miller & Elisabeth Vermilye. Special thanks to the National Museum of African Art & Heran Sereke-Brhan.
Sponsors & Partners:
The Cheuse Center, Fairfax Library Foundation, Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL), The City of Fairfax & Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI). This lecture series is made possible by the generous support of William Miller & Elisabeth Vermilye, whose vision for the arts in Fairfax has supported Fall for the Book, as well as a vibrant creative community at George Mason University.
Details:
Date/Time: April 1 2025, 6:30 p.m.
Location: Stacy C Sherwood Community Center, 3740 Blenheim Boulevard, Fairfax, VA 22030
Program:
Doors open 6 p.m.
6:30 p.m.: Introductions & 45-minute lecture
7:30 p.m.: Discussion between Dinaw Mengestu and William Miller, followed by audience questions
8:00-9:00 p.m.: Book sale and signing
Parking: free. Parking map: https://www.fairfaxva.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/19533/638139572124230000
Bookstore partner: Scrawl Books.
Books they will carry: “Someone Like Us”, “The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears”, “All Our Names” and “How to Read Air”.
More about the Lecture:
In 2023, the Cheuse Center launched its first free public lecture of ideas to enrich public life. This year we are excited to have Dinaw Mengestu deliver the 3rd public lecture on April 1, 2025 at the Stacy C Sherwood Community Center in Fairfax. The 2025 lecture will focus on the Cheuse Center’s theme: ‘the politics of language/ the language of politics’. This year Dinaw Mengestu will deliver the 2025 Cheuse Lecture on:
Extra{ordinary} Courage: the politics of language and masculinity.
This year’s lecture is built around the Center’s 2024-25 theme: the politics of language/ the language of politics.
By exploring courage, Dinaw Mengestu will present us with his ideas on the politics of language and masculinity. Through his work the multitudes of men and women at work in the cities and small towns in America become personal and quietly heroic.
The late Alan Cheuse, after whom the Cheuse Center is named, first introduced our sponsor William Miller to Mengestu’s work. Miller says, “Dinaw is a great choice for the third annual Cheuse Center lecture. And it is even more appropriate in that Alan was the one who first made me aware of his work and indeed introduced him to the Mason community.”
Mengestu is one of Miller’s favorite contemporary writers. Miller says, “His series of four novels is particularly noteworthy for offering heartfelt insights into the immigrant experience—the moving away from or toward something bigger than the self and the resulting costs that are involved for individuals. The losses. The resulting search for connections, for identity. He illustrates that the loss of homeland is not small, ever, under any circumstances. He engages us in themes so timely for today, involving matters we need to be reminded of again and again.” Miller adds:
In the larger sense, his work shows over and over how the way we treat each other conveys a sense of the value we place on others and, as a result, the value others derive of themselves. How what they think they are worth in the eyes of the world informs their own sense of self-worth, even to the point of life and death.
Through singularly unique prose, Dinaw Mengestu’s exploration of the human condition has drawn praise and honor. A household name in the Virginia-Washington DC-Maryland region and a nationally celebrated writer, Mengestu exemplifies the writer who faces in and out of America.
Says Cheuse Director Leeya Mehta, “When Mengestu’s latest novel “Someone Like Us” came out in 2024, there were so many stories in the newspapers, including multiple features and this review in the ‘New York Times Book Review’. We could not go anywhere in Washington without people talking about his novels—set in DC, in Logan Circle, in the mid-west and in Africa; and so often in the in-between spaces of highways and parks, street corners, crossing states and national boundaries. Mengestu’s work often reveals the intrinsic nomadic nature of the human condition.”
“Someone Like Us” is a quiet, anguished book, a novel about parents and children, the spoken and unspoken. It is also an elegy to that in between space we know is there but do not always look at directly; spaces in our peripheral vision. The delicacy of this novel, its circular avoidance of love as if it could hurt more than we can bear, may remind readers of his debut novel, “The Beautiful Things Heaven Bears”.
Mehta says:
By hosting this annual marquee event in the City of Fairfax, we see an incredible opportunity to build bridges across our diverse region. Conversation builds community. Like the two writers, Nikki Giovanni and Azar Nafisi, who delivered the lecture before him, Dinaw Mengestu’s books will stimulate conversations that are vital to private, civic, and public life.
About Dinaw Mengestu:
Dinaw Mengestu is the author of four novels, Someone Like Us (Knopf 2024), All Our Names (Knopf, 2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007), all New York Times Notable Books. A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list in 2010. His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. He holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MFA from Columbia University. He is the director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College and the director of the Center for Ethics and Writing.
About William Miller:
William Miller chairs the advisory board of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center, and also serves as an advisor to the Watershed Lit center at George Mason University and is a member of the Fall for the Book board of directors. He directed Mason’s creative writing program for more than two dozen years and taught in Mason’s English Department for more than thirty. He formerly worked as a newspaper journalist and has published fiction as well as nonfiction. He assisted Jack Censer in developing the book On the Trail of the DC Sniper and Kris O’Shee in developing Our Last Blue Moon. He is the host of the popular literary podcast Upstart Crow.
About the Lecture:
Founded in the Spring of 2023, the Cheuse Lecture of Ideas is now in its third year. Attended by hundreds of people from two dozen cities in the region, it is named after Alan Cheuse and hosted in Virginia by the Cheuse Center, The Fairfax Library Foundation, Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL), The City of Fairfax & Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).
The Cheuse Center’s mission:
Named for Alan Cheuse, NPR book critic and professor at George Mason University for thirty years, the Cheuse Center is a global community of writers, translators, and readers. We send emerging writers abroad, bring established and new voices to America, and curate public programs to deepen global civic engagement. We are a home for international writers and for American writers who face out into the world. By enriching public life through reading, writing, and translation, we actively pursue a just society.
Previous Lectures:
2023 Inaugural lecturer Azar Nafisi: The Republic of Imagination: https://cheusecenter.gmu.edu/about/the-busboys-and-poets-lecture
2024 lecturer Nikki Giovanni: Jimmy and Me: https://cheusecenter.gmu.edu/articles/20672
