HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

The dramatic story of the Jewish Bund—a revolutionary movement from a vanished world—and its radical vision of solidarity in an age of division.

“Molly Crabapple beckons readers through a portal to an irresistible, lost world, one bound together by passion, solidarity, and a burning hunger for justice.”—Naomi Klein, New York Times bestselling author of No Logo and Doppelganger

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Sam Rothbort created “memory paintings” with the hope of resurrecting the vanished world of his shtetl childhood. Decades later, his great-granddaughter, the award-winning artist Molly Crabapple, discovered these paintings and one stood out: a girl, her dress the color of sky, hurling a rock through a cottage window. Itka the Bundist, Breaking Windows.

Itka is how Crabapple met the Jewish Labor Bund. Once the most influential Jewish political force in eastern Europe, the Bund was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist. The Bundists fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but “here where we live.”

In the first popular history of the Bund, Crabapple re-creates their extraordinary world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious rebels, clandestine revolutionaries and lovers on the barricades. The Bundists live deeply within this violent, volatile, and somehow hopeful period, as their stories interweave with the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust. The Bund’s rise and fall raises the vital question: What can we learn from a movement that, for all its toughness, imagination, and moral clarity, was largely destroyed?

Here Where We Live Is Our Country reanimates a band of idealists who broadened our global political imagination. As we once again contend with nationalism, repression, and the struggle for belonging, the Bund’s remarkable story and message—that liberation, dignity, and solidarity must begin where we stand—reaches across time as a guide to our own urgent moment. 

Molly Crabapple is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside journalist Karen Attiah. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Crabapple will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in-person.

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Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun (with Marwan Hisham), which was longlisted for a National Book Award. Her reportage is the winner of the Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art.

Karen Attiah is a journalist and former columnist for The Washington Post, known for her insightful work on race, gender, human rights, and international affairs. She is also Founder and Lead Instructor for the Resistance Studies Series. A native of Dallas, Texas, Karen is a former Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, and has a masters degree in international affairs from Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs. She has reported from countries including Nigeria, Curacao, Ghana, and Germany. Her work has appeared in various global outlets including Associated Press. In 2016, she became The Washington Post’s founding Global Opinions editor, commissioning op-eds on global issues, and was named an Opinions columnist in 2021. Karen has received numerous awards, including the 2019 George Polk Special Award and NABJ’s Journalist of the Year, and Washingtonian Magazine’s “Star to Watch” Award. She was an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She is currently working on a book, Say Your Word, Then Leave, a book about the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

BOOK DETAILS

Here Where We Live Is Our Country

The Story of the Jewish Bund

By Molly Crabapple

April 07, 2026 | Hardcover, 480 pages, $32.00

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