Tomás Anjos Barão

Tomás Anjos Barão

tomasbarao.pt

Communication designer, activist and volunteeer from Portugal.

E-mail: tomas@tomasbarao.ptTelegram: tomasanjosbaraoMatrix.org: @umleaozinho:matrix.org

Some things that get me out of bed

Some things that get me out of bed

A library of references in permanent construction, and probabily already out of date. Many of the descriptions are not yet translated to english, for which I apologize.

Books

Books

Cover: Orion Publishing Group edition

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin (🇺🇸)

A large group of anarchist people left their planet to start a new society on the moon, in harmony with their values. We enter the story some generations later and get to know closely some characters: their joys and troubles, the ideas and everyday life, what they won and what they lost. There are no magic recipes to erradicate suffering and injustice from the world, but a better world is always possible.

Ciudat Princesa, by Marina Garcés (🇪🇸)

A brilliant philosopher and activist masterfully interweaves her personal story with the stories of the collectives she was in and the recent history of Barcelona. Theory and practice, thought and action; the management of time; the importance of being together and talking. It's like self-help, but for the collective

Teaching as a Subversive Activity, by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner (🇺🇸)

50 years passed since this book was published, and its potential and relevance remain intactc. Reading it has given me a renewed hope on humanity, based on a profound conviction that the solution to almost every problem of the world is an emancipatory and liberating education.

Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman (🇺🇸)

Neil Postman compares the distopia of Brave New World by Huxley with the one in 1984 by Orwell, arguing that we're closer to the first one. It describes the numbing and infantilizing effects of television on society, in opposition to books' ability to convey complex arguments. It provides a very interesting framework to think about mass culture.

Socialism... Seriously, by Danny Katch (🇺🇸)

A well-humoured introduction to the idea of socialism, showing that utopia might not be as distant as it seems.

Memoirs of a Forger, by Margarida Tengarrinha (🇵🇹)

Many people fought the 48-year dictatorship in Portugal in the 20th century. The author was one of them, living underground, forging documents for the Communist Party to help people escape from prision and torture. She tells her impressive stories (happy, distressing, funny) to teach us that we, as a people resisting, were the heroes of that time.