Deanna Isaacs, author at Chicago Reader

Image shows the Louis Sullivan-designed Getty Tomb at Graceland. It is made of buff-colored stone with an arching doorway. The gates are greenish bronze. There are leaves on the ground and a branch with autumn leaves in the foreground of the photo.

Walking with the dead

by Deanna Isaacs August 3, 2022August 3, 2022

When Anne Ford interviewed Adam Selzer for the Reader in 2014, it was all about his job as a ghost tour leader. You didn’t have to read between the lines to sense that it wasn’t the perfect gig for a truth-seeking research glutton. “No matter how skeptical I tried to be, I felt like I […]

Top image is of Kenilworth Beach, shot from an elevated viewpoint. The bottom image is of a sign from the Winnetka Park District reminding visitors of the need for beach and boat passes.

On Culture

Sun, sand—and segregation

by Deanna Isaacs July 20, 2022July 20, 2022

So, a bicyclist walks up to a beach on the North Shore. It’s hot, he’s been riding, he just wants to put his feet in the cool Lake Michigan water that he can see sparkling behind a booth and a prominent “beach pass required” sign. A hapless kid with a summer job is manning the […]

A street scene from Highland Park after the July 4 parade shooting. Twilight. Emergency vehicles line the road. Police officers stand in the street at a middle distance.

On Culture

A bloody Independence Day in Highland Park

by Deanna Isaacs July 6, 2022July 6, 2022

Nothing was said about it on the July 4 television interviews I saw, but among the security experts interviewed during coverage of the Highland Park parade shooting, one face and name had resonance. Crisis management expert and former FBI agent Phil Andrew survived another mass shooting in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs, more than three decades […]

Cover of the book Riding Jane Crow features a sepia-toned photo of a Black woman in 1920s-era clothing hanging on the side of a freight train. To the right of the book cover is a black-and-white photo of Miriam Thaggert, wearing glasses and a dark turtleneck sweater.

On Culture

Sun, surf, summer: time to head to the library

by Deanna Isaacs June 22, 2022June 22, 2022

There’s a whole lot of story in history. And so much depends on the perspective of the storyteller. What, for example, will the future think it knows of our fraught time? What will be included? What will be omitted? What will be the spin on events like the war in Ukraine or the 2020 presidential […]

Five dancers in red cloaks crouch in a semi-circle, their hands raised in fists before them.

Performing Arts Feature

Hot weather, hot shows

by Kerry Reid, Irene Hsiao and Deanna Isaacs June 22, 2022July 8, 2022

Summer is officially here, in case the sweat and lightning bugs weren’t enough of a clue. In addition to the shows and artists we profiled in our summer arts preview issue this week, we’ve got just a few suggestions for other offerings in theater, dance, and opera that look promising—whether you’re looking for a nice […]

Two black-and-white photos presented side by side. On the left is an image of a Black woman

On Culture

Out at the Center

by Deanna Isaacs June 8, 2022June 16, 2022

They were there. No fuss, no ballyhoo, but queer artists have been a significant part of Bronzeville’s South Side Community Art Center since its founding in 1940. You might or might not see it in the art. That’s the main takeaway from “EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center,” on exhibit at SSCAC through July 2. “EMERGENCE: […]

Brett Gadsden, a Black man in a dark blue suit, stands left next to Geoffrey R. Stone, an older white man in a gray suit. They are are in front of banners for PEN America and above their heads is a sign at the American Writers Museum reading "Mind of a Writer." of a

On Culture

Flashpoints, free speech, and the law

by Deanna Isaacs May 25, 2022May 24, 2022

Last week, amid the usual tsunami of grim news about inflation, mass shootings, pandemic, and war, came word that the New York Court of Appeals is considering whether the Bronx Zoo is violating the rights of Happy, an Asian elephant who’s lived there for more than four decades, by confining her to a portion of […]

Woman holding sign reading "Remember when you said I was overreacting?" with text underlined in red. She is standing on the sidewalk in front of others at the pro-choice rally in Chicago on May 7.

On Culture

The end of Roe

by Deanna Isaacs May 11, 2022May 12, 2022

Regarding the recently revealed U.S. Supreme Court draft ruling on Roe v. Wade: WTF? Because, it’s the F we’re talking about, right? That little itch we’re biologically programmed to scratch and its inordinate, inequitable aftermath? As I’ve opined here before, if cisgender men were the ones carrying a pregnancy for nine months, suffering through an […]

Image of the shell of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church

On Culture

Chicago’s blessed with a motherlode of stunning churches

by Deanna Isaacs April 27, 2022April 27, 2022

What kind of God allows a church to burn down on Good Friday? That’s the question that came to mind when the 130-year-old Antioch Missionary Baptist Church at Stewart and 63rd Street went up in flames earlier this month, followed by a familiar answer: the same god that has allowed slavery, Holocaust, plague, war, and […]

A group of performers in American colonial-era clothing stands in a line in front of a bridge, where two men stand.

Arts & Culture

In search of freedom

by Deanna Isaacs April 25, 2022April 25, 2022

This commission by Chicago Opera Theater brings to town a new opera by the prolific and celebrated Belize-born British composer, singer, pianist, and performer Errollyn Wallen, with librettist Deborah Brevoort. Loosely based on S.I. Martin’s novel Incomparable World, the story is grounded in the little-known historical fact that the Brits recruited enslaved people in the […]

An image of people at a baseball game on the left; a sign for gambling app Bet-Tenders on the right

On Culture

Bleacher bummed

by Deanna Isaacs April 13, 2022April 13, 2022

Something else took me to Arizona last week, but on what the locals considered a pleasant Tuesday afternoon I was in Surprise Stadium, in the Phoenix suburb of the same name, for the Cubs’s final preseason game. They were facing the Texas Rangers. Both teams were wearing Cubbie blue. The temperature on the field was […]

A South Asian woman in a dark top and light trousers kneels, lunging forward toward the right side of the photo, drenched in a blue light.

Arts & Culture

Springing ahead with live performance

by Kerry Reid, Deanna Isaacs and Irene Hsiao April 4, 2022April 6, 2022

While the BA.2 variant of COVID-19 looms as a possible impediment to attending live performances (even as some of us now qualify for a second booster), shows are booming. We’ve got a baker’s dozen of events to consider if you feel up to getting out and about in the next couple of months. We also suggest […]

Three women in ragged dresses, their heads covered with scarves, stand in a row, holding pieces of paper with musical notes on them.

Performing Arts Review

Holocaust, the opera

by Deanna Isaacs March 31, 2022March 31, 2022

It was a little disturbing that in the final moments of Chicago Fringe Opera’s stirring production of the Holocaust opera Two Remain (Out of Darkness), what should pop into my head but “Springtime for Hitler.” I was thinking I could blame Mel Brooks. If I’d never seen The Producers, maybe a rousing full-cast anthem titled […]

Three Black people onstage. A boy in a short-sleeved white shirt kneels left. A woman in an orange dress sits in a blue chair in the center. Behind her is a man wearing clothing similar to the boy.

On Culture

Coming of age in an ordinary and dangerous place

by Deanna Isaacs March 30, 2022March 30, 2022

Journalist Charles M. Blow once wrote in his New York Times column that he “likes to think of himself as a Southern writer.” His childhood in Gibsland, Louisiana, shaped his writing, and in the south, “you don’t so much say words as sing them.” Now, at Lyric Opera, his own story is literally being sung. […]

Michelle Bradley as Tosca stands behind a table with wine glasses on it. She is staring at a knife in her hand.

On Culture

A resonant Tosca

by Deanna Isaacs March 16, 2022March 28, 2022

There’s a war raging in Europe. A brutal clash that includes an entrenched repressive autocracy and ordinary civilians determined to fight for their freedom. Tyrannical power is vested in one man—a deranged “security” professional who cares only about his own twisted agenda. He decides who lives and dies; everyone trembles before him. Someone needs to […]