Tag Archives: Author Talk

Word Up: Nicholas Freudenberg’s FIGHTING FOR NEW YORK with Merlin Chowkwanyun

Word Up welcomes Nicholas Freudenberg to discuss his new book, Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since the 1960s, with Merlin Chowkwanyun, author of All Health Politics Is Local.

“A roadmap for health activists, Fighting for New York illustrates each step needed for successful advocacy through campaigns conducted by a wide range of city-based community organizations since the 1960s. These stories should inspire any reader to join the movement to make health justice a reality.” Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters

ABOUT THE BOOK
What would New York City look like without the hard-won victories of social movements? From the Young Lords campaigns to prevent lead poisoning and tuberculosis in the late 1960s to ACT UP’s fight for people affected by AIDS in the early 1990s through Housing Justice for All’s recent advocacy for tenants, generations of activists have struggled to make the city a healthier and more equal place for all.

Fighting for New York is a pragmatic account of health-focused social movements over the past several decades. Nicholas Freudenberg–a longtime public health professional, researcher, and activist–examines a variety of cases, from campaigns for reproductive rights, environmental justice, and free school lunch to the Close Rikers Island and Fight for $15 movements. He analyzes how activist leaders, members, and organizations approach injustices, build coalitions, frame their messages, and define success, considering which strategies worked and which failed to achieve their goals.

Fighting for New York synthesizes the lessons of these campaigns into practical guidance for the activists, health professionals, and policy makers of today and tomorrow, suggesting specific strategies gleaned from decades of experience. Highlighting the voices of activists, this book is a riveting account of struggles to improve living conditions and uphold human dignity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicholas Freudenberg is distinguished professor emeritus of public health at the City University of New York School of Public Health. He has studied, evaluated, and participated in activism on childhood lead poisoning, AIDS prevention, urban food policy, environmental justice, and mass incarceration. Freudenberg is the author of several books, most recently At What Cost: Modern Capitalism and the Future of Health (2021).

Word Up Recirculation: Semiha Cemâl – A Portrait of a Turkish Sufi Philosopher

Word Up  and The Kenan Center for Turkish Cultural Studies presents a book talk with Dr. Arzu Eylül Yalçınkaya for”Semiha Cemal: A Portrait of a Turkish Sufi Philosopher”, accompanied by a Sufi music performance by Istanbul Meşk Ensemble.

Music based on the book’s central motif: ‘Let Us Love and Be Loved.’

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket. Please register in advance.

ABOUT THE BOOK  Semiha Cemāl: A Portrait of a Turkish Sufi Philosopher restores to memory a pioneering figure whose voice was nearly lost to history. A philosopher, educator, and mystic, Semiha Cemāl lived at the threshold of empire and republic, bringing together Sufi metaphysics and classical philosophy in a way that quietly challenged the binaries of her time. This book presents both a critical portrait of her life and the inaugural English edition of her 1927 novel Aşk Peygamberi (The Prophet of Love). Written in Ottoman Turkish during the early Republican reforms, the novel stands as a bold work of metaphysical fiction. It stages love as a force of ethical transformation, blending Platonic allegory with Sufi cosmology to explore the soul’s journey toward truth.

Through biography, interpretation, and translation, the volume situates Semiha Cemāl within a broader genealogy of Turkish thought, one that highlights the contributions of women, mystics, and overlooked intellectuals. At once scholarly and accessible, it invites readers to rediscover a voice that speaks with clarity, courage, and contemplative depth across a century of silence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  Dr. Arzu Eylül Yalçınkaya is a historian of Ottoman cultural and social thought, with a focus on intellectual history, ethical traditions, and the transmission of Turkish literary and musical heritage. Her work explores the role of late Ottoman intellectuals—particularly those shaped by Sufi traditions—in processes of modernization and cultural continuity. She has contributed to the field through academic publications, curated concerts, interdisciplinary conferences, and musical performances in Istanbul, New York, Boston, and Cambridge—often exploring classical Turkish music and the symbolic world of the makam tradition. As the founder of The Kenan Center for Turkish Cultural Studies, Dr. Yalçınkaya has envisioned the Center as a platform where rigorous scholarship, creative production, and cultural renewal converge—grounded in Turkish intellectual legacies yet open to the imaginative possibilities of the present

Word Up Recirculation: Antonio Roman-Alcalá‘s NORTH STARS OF EMANCIPATION

Word Up Recirculation welcomes sustainable food systems researcher Antonio Roman-Alcalá to discuss his new book, NORTH STARS OF EMANCIPATION: California’s Diverse Food and Farming Movements in Times of Racial Reckoning, on how greater racial inclusion can propel movements forward and help realize sustainable change, from a longtime political organizer and researcher.

“North Stars of Emancipation is a profound treatment of the complex barriers to transforming an exploitative industrial food system in clear need of it. Read for the data, the collective wisdom, but also to learn about, perhaps feel a part of, a burgeoning of creative thinking and searching action.”~Ricardo Salvador, Director and Senior Scientist of the Food and Environment Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket. Please register in advance.

In compliance with Word Up Community

Word Up Community Bookshop: (Re)present Reading Series by No, Dear Magazine – Poetry

(Re)Present Reading Series seeks to pay homage to the New York City poets whose voices are now absent from our lives, especially those voices whose indelible imprint has sustained a revolutionary poetics by connecting us to a history prior to, and in opposition to, mass gentrification and corporate takeover. By collaborating with local poets, our intention is to represent and re-present those poets who are gone and honor how their voices continue to live on within the revolutionary spirit of New York City poetry.

Featuring:
Tauyo Na
Kenning JP Garcia
Safia Jama
Zakia Henderson Brown

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees. Please register in advance.

Recirculation Word Up: Dixa Ashariel Ramírez’s MIST with Alejandro Heredia

Word Up welcomes Dixa Ashariel Ramírez to celebrate her debut novel “Mist”, about two overachieving professors who join forces to investigate why generations of Black women have been disappearing into a terrifying realm of eternal ice. In conversation with Ramírez will be Alejandro Heredia, author of “Loca”.

ABOUT THE BOOK: It is 2019 and Josefina Pujols, an overachieving professor going up for tenure at Tanner University (“The Ninth Ivy”), watches in dismay as social media popularity threatens to take over the academic standards she had been rigorously trained to uphold. Online shopping, group chat, and an alcohol problem palliate her encounters with an inbox full of increasingly ludicrous requests from her colleagues.  When Doralis Montero, who had mysteriously quit her prestigious professorship two years earlier, reaches out and explains the sinister reasons behind her disappearance, Jo leaps into a research rabbit hole teeming with South American Nazi villages, racial impostors, and ancient AI. Despite the life-threatening risks inherent to this research project, Jo glows with newfound purpose.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  Dixa Ashariel Ramirez was born in Santo Domingo and raised in the Bronx. She teaches literature at Brown University and has published many works of scholarship. She now also writes about spiritual transformation, consciousness, and the nature of reality. Some of her work is available on her website, open_in_newdixaramirez.com.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER  Alejandro Heredia is a writer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from LAMBDA Literary, Dominican Studies Institute, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. All attendees must register in advance.