Call for Red Books Day 2024

The International Union of Left Publishers calls on left writers, publishers, bookshops, and readers to join us to rescue the collective life on 21 February 2024, Red Books Day. As on the previous days, we encourage you to hold public readings of your favourite Red Books in your own language (it is also International Mother Language Day). In 2023, a million people participated in Red Books Day; for 2024, we would like to at least double the number!

Red Books Day takes place on the date in 1848 when Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. That book, one of the most widely read in the world, inspired billions of people over the past century and a half to build a process of socialism that would transcend the stalled problems created by capitalism (hunger, illiteracy, poverty). We honour the Manifesto by holding Red Books Day on February 21.

We urge all left writers, publishers, bookshops, and readers to organise public readings of any red books, by rooting these readings in a festival-like atmosphere, a left culture for our times. It is important to note that Red Books Day is an event that has no centre, no directing force as such. IULP is the initiator, but we would like left writers, publishers, bookshops, and readers to do anything to encourage the reading of Red Books not only on February 21, but in fact through the year.

Some resources to help build Red Books Day 2024:

  1. Please visit our website, redbooksday.org. At the site, you will find the following:
    1. A brochure that you could circulate about Red Books Day.
    2. A short video that could be downloaded and uploaded by you in social media or on your YouTube channel.
    3. Artwork from previous years (https://redbooksday.org/Art).
  2. The art team associated with Red Books Day will release a poster every month from 21 December onwards that will be collected in 2025 into a booklet. More information about this activity will be available soon.
  3. Please use the social media toolkit if you find it useful (https://redbooksday.org/Social-Media-Toolkit).
  4. We are encouraging publishers and writers to share short snippets of left poetry in their original language through their social media channels, using the hashtag #RedBooksDay (# with Red Books Day in your language). These snippets can be used by other publishers as well as part of building the atmosphere toward Red Books Day 2024 and onward.
  5. The IULP will send out a note early next year about the creation of small booklets that collect the reminiscences from left political leaders and writers about their experience with Red Books in their youth.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with us.


Warmly,

International Union of Left Publishers.

The artist, Chemm Parvathy, is an activist, and member of Communist Party of India (Marxist). She is also a recipient of the Presidential National Balshree Award for Creative Performance and pursues her dance in Bharathanatyam.