Word Up welcomes Publisher’s Weekly Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro to discuss his new book Daylight Come: Harry Belafonte and the World He Made (Significations), a vibrant, revealing portrait of the “King of Calypso,” whose extraordinary performing career and activism helped remake America through the civil rights era and beyond.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with a maximum of 100 attendees. Please register in advance.

ABOUT THE BOOK  Even three years after his death, Harry Belafonte is everywhere. You can’t go to a wedding, or to a sports arena, without hearing “Day-O,” “Jump in the Line,” or “Jamaica Farewell.” The Harlem-born son of Caribbean immigrants, Belafonte turned the folk music of the islands into American pop—and shaped the fantasy of Caribbean life that endures as an ideal and as a multibillion-dollar tourist industry. Belafonte released the first million-selling LP in history. He was America’s first Black movie star, the first Black person to produce a prime-time special on network TV, and the first to win an Emmy Award. He was once the highest-paid Black performer of all time, beloved by Black and white fans alike, even under segregation. His artistic career helped create the pop culture of the twentieth century—and his political activism reshaped the course of American history.

In this sparkling new biography, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro brings Belafonte’s personality and music vibrantly to life, following him from rags to riches and from Harlem to Jamaica to the March on Washington. Jelly-Schapiro takes us inside Belafonte’s lifelong brotherhood with Sidney Poitier, his friendship with Fidel Castro, his collaboration with Nelson Mandela, and the sometimes shocking therapeutic relationships his difficult upbringing necessitated. At the heart of the story is Belafonte’s bond with Martin Luther King Jr., whose cause Belafonte would champion for the rest of his life. That commitment to the greater good would sustain him and benefit untold numbers—and would come at a cost.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose books include Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names; Island People: The Caribbean and the World; and, with Rebecca Solnit, Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas. His work appears regularly in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books. Jelly-Schapiro teaches journalism at New York University and is director of publishing at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, where he hosts the popular Author Talks series and is coeditor in chief of Pioneer Works Broadcast.