Tag Archives: Word Up Community Bookshop

Word Up: BODEGA CATS OF NEW YORK with Dan Rimada

Get to know the working cats of New York City and the owners of these neighborhood stores! Word Up welcomes Dan Rimada, the founder of the beloved archive Bodega Cats of New York (now a book with the same name), which led to bodega cat legislation in New York City and New York State!

To celebrate the cats in our neighborhood, we’ll be hosting a cat supply drive in November! Feel free to drop off supplies before the event at Word Up Community Bookshop or the fridge outside the shop starting November 3rd.

“New York City is the world’s melting pot, and the place where it all happens is the bodega. It is a safe space built into your neighborhood’s corner to provide warmth, a hot meal, and the most perfect part of New York City culture: THE bodega cat. Dan Rimada has captured the soul of these spaces perfectly. As someone who has been at the forefront of documenting the cats that manage these shops citywide, I can tell you firsthand: we would be nothing without them and the papis, habibis, and ocks who pour so much love into their bodegas. They are the heart of New York City.” —Michelladonna, Actor and Host of Mad Realities’ Shop Cats

Please register in advance.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Bodega Cats of New York is the first book to document these working cats—and social media superstars—with the access and intimacy they deserve. The cats represent the last generation of true working animals in NYC. Through four years of building relationships across all five boroughs, author Dan Rimada and photographer Gulce Kilkis have gained unprecedented access to capture both the cats and the immigrant families who’ve built their lives around these neighborhood stores, which serve as anchors for their communities. Featuring beautiful photographs and brief, touching narratives of 60 cats from all five boroughs, this book provides a behind-the-scenes look at this New York City phenomenon, including: – The informal community networks that keep these cats healthy and loved – Heartfelt customer interactions with their favorite felines – Individual cat personalities and their daily territories – Owners’ stories about how cats became family members – And much more!

Bodega Cats of New York isn’t another cat book; it’s a documentation of one of the last authentic pieces of old New York—the family-owned corner stores where cats still do what they’ve done for centuries: work for a living, charm the customers, and make every day a little better for everyone they meet. Whether you’re a cat fan, a store regular, or take an interest in photography, this photo book will tug on your heartstrings and delight you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Rimada is the founder of Bodega Cats of New York, an archive documenting New York City’s working bodega cats through their names, routines, stores, owners, workers, and stories. He began the project in 2022 after noticing Luna, his local bodega cat, and realizing how little of this everyday New York institution had been formally recorded. Since then, Bodega Cats of New York has documented cats across all five boroughs, built a public archive, and launched the campaign to protect New York’s bodega cats. The campaign’s viral petition helped lead to bodega cat legislation in New York City and New York State.

Word Up: Asale Angel-Ajani’s FUGITIVE ARCHIVE

Word Up welcomes writer and anthropologist Asale Angel-Ajani to discuss her memoir Fugitive Archives: My Family and the American Myth of Belonging, an incisive, lyrical exploration of one family’s history that radically overturns American myths about race, violence, and belonging.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Angel-Ajani and her twin, the only Black children in a working-class white family, were shuffled between relatives, coming of age in a country that offered little refuge. Raised in the gaps left behind, they learned how race and betrayal shaped their family legacy and the identities they inherited. When her grandmother, the family’s record keeper, died, Angel-Ajani took up the archive, looking for answers—about her mother’s abandonment, her father’s legal struggles, and her grandmother’s passage from overt racism to an improbable love with her Black step-grandfather. Most urgently, she sought to understand the origins of her inescapable anger.

Tracing ancestors enslaved, Indigenous, free, and white, Angel-Ajani uncovered how people survived violent systems that rewarded compliance and punished mercy—and how some carved pockets of resistance, whose acts of resistance rippled across generations. Through stories of stolen land, the enslavement and murder of her earliest ancestor, her great-grandmother’s role in the WKKK, and the incarceration of a step-grandmother and uncle in a Japanese internment camp, she weaves her linage into the national narrative, exposing connections deliberately erased from official accounts. She reveals a country not of strangers split into “us” and “them,” but of lives deeply entangled.

In a moment defined by moral exhaustion, rising violence, and historical erasure, Fugitive Archives lays bare a nation’s unresolved past through one family’s story of grief, betrayal, courage, and love. It is both a testament and an invitation—a vital exploration of race and class, a map for survival and resistance, and a necessary reckoning with the truths we inherit to reshape a more just future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Asale Angel-Ajani is a writer and anthropologist whose work examines race, migration, incarceration, gender, and belonging. She is an associate professor and director of Women’s and Gender Studies at The City College of New York, with affiliations in anthropology, international studies, and Black studies. She is the author of the novel A Country You Can Leave and the nonfiction book Strange Trade, and has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, New York University’s Gallatin School, and Hong Kong Baptist University. Her fellowships and grants include support from the Ford, Mellon, and Rockefeller foundations and a Hutchins Family Fellowship at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Stanford University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Hong Kong.

Dominican Writers Association & Word Up: Rita Indiana in Washington Heights – Celebrating ASMODEUS

A special evening with acclaimed Dominican writer, musician, and artist Rita Indiana in celebration of her new novel, Admodeus, a hallucinatory thriller about a failing demon’s search for a new host in post-dictatorship Santo Domingo.

On this evening, Rita joins us for her first literary event in the neighborhood she calls home. She will be in conversation with Alex V. Cruz to discuss her return to fiction, and the intersections of literature, music, memory, Santo Domingo, identity, and place that have shaped her singular body of work.

The evening will include an intimate conversation, reading, audience Q&A, and book signing, bringing our community together to celebrate one of the Dominican Republic’s most distinctive contemporary literary voices.

Copies of Asmodeus will be available for purchase through Word Up Community Bookshop, including English and Spanish editions.

A maximum of 80 attendees. Please register in advance. The event space is located on the second floor, which is accessible by elevator from the first floor elevators.

Asmodeus, a millennia-old demon, has inhabited Rudy, a once-legendary Dominican rock star, for decades. But in 1992, the demon’s powers begin to fade. What follows is a desperate weeklong odyssey as Asmodeus ricochets through the bodies of the inhabitants of Santo Domingo’s underworld: from Guinea, a young metalhead plotting a warehouse heist, to Mireya, the daughter of a former torturer, to other souls caught in his chaotic orbit. Each possession reveals another layer of a city still reeling from the Balaguer dictatorship. And each new host engenders a surprising tenderness in the demon.

From acclaimed musical artist and author Rita Indiana, Asmodeus is written in urgent prose punctuated by original décimas, ten-line rhyming poems drawing from Latin American musical and oral tradition. Indiana weaves together Dominican heavy metal, black magic, and political trauma. Asmodeus is a supernatural noir, riotous thriller, and searing portrait of a nation grappling with its complicated past.

Rita Indiana is a writer, composer, and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. She has written six novels including Tentacle, winner of the Grand Prize of the Association of Caribbean Writers. She lives in New York City.

Word Up: Ayendy Bonifacio’s BLESS ME, PAPI

Word Up welcomes Ayendy Bonifacio for his new coming-of-age tale, Bless Me, Papi, about a young Dominican American boy facing a grave loss and a feathered phantom.

“Humanity shines through in this work that is notable for its cast of memorable, well-wrought characters. The pages sing with fresh, lyrical prose; a must-read.” —Kirkus, starred review

ABOUT THE BOOK
Between the looming buildings of Brooklyn, a young Dominican American boy only ever called mijo by his family has just lost his father to brain cancer. In the wake of his grief, he begins to see his deceased father take the form of a pigeon and ghost, acting as protector and advisor in moments of duress and confusion. Determined to find out the truth behind his father’s appearances, he sets out on the streets of Brooklyn with his outspoken friend Naño, and in the hills of the Dominican Republic with his cousin Matias, in search of answers, only to discover more ghostly apparitions and inexplicable occurrences. In a world of lost things and in-betweens, the grief-stricken son must choose whether he can bear to let go of his father or accept the consequences of what we let haunt us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ayendy Bonifacio (he/him/his) is a Dominican American writer, poet, and scholar whose work explores memory, migration, race, and the legacies of colonialism in the Americas. He is the author of Dique Dominican; To the River, We Are Migrants: Poems/Poemas; and Bless Me, Papi. His second collection of poems, Ríos Are for Chivos and Eternity will be released in August 2027. Bonifacio’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other outlets. He is an associate professor of English at the University of Toledo in Ohio where he lives with his partner and daughter.

Please register in advance.

Word Up: Rising in the Heights with artists Randy Mason & Jamell Ogbanna

Hip-hop artist Randy Mason and keyboardist Jamell Ogbanna join Leadlights Ensemble for a hopeful afternoon of hip hop, rhyme, and string music, featuring Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman.

Free copies of the book will be available.

Rising in the Heights is a festival of free outdoor public arts performances curated by Leadlights Ensemble in partnership with Word Up Community Bookshop. The festival celebrates the rich artistic contributions of Latinx and Black cultures and promotes children’s literacy through music and bilingual storytelling.

Randy Mason is a Bronx hip hop artist, songwriter, cajón percussionist, educator, pastor, and family man whose life and art reflect the heartbeat of faith, rhythm, and community. Fusing the raw energy of New York City hip hop with the rich traditions of Afro-Peruvian percussion, Randy creates a one-of-a-kind sound that inspires, educates, and uplifts.​

​Born and raised in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip hop, Randy’s music embodies his Puerto Rican and African American heritage. His performances blend storytelling, live instrumentation, and lyrical depth — a celebration of culture, creativity, and hope. Whether performing on stage, teaching in classrooms, or preaching from the pulpit, Randy brings the same message.

​As a hip hop educator and founder of R.H.Y.M.E. (Rhymes Help Young Minds Excel), Randy uses rap, writing, and rhythm to mentor youth throughout New York City. His innovative programs help students discover their voices, develop confidence, and dream beyond their circumstances.

Beyond the mic, Randy is a devoted husband, father, and arts and mentoring program director committed to empowering communities through creativity. With every beat, rhyme, and classroom moment, Randy Mason continues to prove that hip hop is more than music — it’s ministry, mentorship, and movement.