Spady Cultural Heritage Museum, Arts Garage, & the Community Redevelopment Agency of Delray Beach Collaborate to Launch Authors Speak Series on The Impact of Race on American Society
Leslie Gray Streeter – February 10
Dr. Ralina L. Joseph, PhD & Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith, PhD – April 21
Simone Browne – June 16
(Delray Beach, FL – January 5, 2022) In an effort to celebrate and promote the journey of black cultural awareness, three of the most respected nonprofit organizations in Delray Beach are collaborating to present Authors Speak Series 2022, according to Charlene Farrington, Executive Director of Spady Cultural Heritage Museum; Marjorie Waldo, President & CEO of Arts Garage; and Renee Jadusingh, Executive Director of the Community Redevelopment Agency of Delray Beach.
The timely topic of this “free to see” series is The Impact of Race on American Society, offering an “interesting enlightening conversations with writers who have cultivated a perspective on black cultural awareness through their research and personal experiences.”
“We are excited to provide additional opportunities to explore the experiences of black people in America,” promises Farrington, while Waldo declares “working toward equity is likely the most important work we can do at Arts Garage.”
Jadusingh agrees: “We can always learn something new and hopefully see things from a different perspective. This series offers a space to explore the realities that others experience day to day. Supporting educational initiatives such as this shines a light on causes of conditions that can contribute to slum and blight in communities. Hopefully, people will gain compassion for one another from the information shared through these informative talks.”
Leslie Gray Streeter
Black Widow
Thursday, February 10 at 6:30 pm
Returning to Palm Beach County for the first time in two years, Leslie Gray Streeter was the longtime pop culture columnist for The Palm Beach Post
before publishing her widely praised memoir Black Widow. With her signature warmth, hilarity, and tendency to overshare, Streeter looks at widowhood through the prism of race, mixed marriage, and aging. She redefines the stages of grief, from coffin shopping to day-drinking, to being a grown-ass woman crying for your mommy, to breaking up and making up with God, to facing the fact that life goes on even after the death of the person you were supposed to live it with. Tender, true, and endearingly hilarious, Black Widow is a story about the power of love, and how the only guidebook for recovery is the one you write yourself.
Dr. Ralina L. Joseph, PhD
& Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith, PhD
Generation Mixed Goes to School:
Radically Listening to Multiracial Kids
Thursday, April 21 at 7:00 pm
Dr. Ralina L. Joseph is a scholar, teacher, and facilitator of race and communication. She is Presidential Term Professor of Communication, founding and acting Director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity, and Associate Dean of Equity and Justice in Graduate Programs at the University of Washington, Seattle. In addition to two previous works, last year she co-authored with Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith the book Generation Mixed Goes to School: Radically Listening to Multiracial Kids. This book weaves together stories of mixed-race children and youth, teachers, and caregivers and investigates how implicit bias affects multiracial kids in unforeseen ways. In addition, it breaks out of the Black/White binary to include the perspective of mixed-race children from Asian American, Latinx, and Native American backgrounds and provides stories, academic research, and tangible exercises that together create the opportunity for meaningful anti-racist change. Dr. Briscoe-Smith is currently the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California where she is a professor.
Simone Browne
Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness
Thursday, June 16 at 7:00 pm
Simone Browne is Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and as Research Director of Critical Surveillance Inquiry at a local research collaborative works with scholars, organizations and communities to curate conversations, exhibitions and research that examine the social and ethical implications of surveillance technologies, both AI-enabled and not. Her award-winning book Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness
shows how contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery, such as branding, runaway slave notices, and lantern laws, and continues to be a social and political norm.
To RSVP for any or all of these three free Authors Speak events, please contact https://artsgarage.org/event/authors-speak-the-impact-of-race-on american-society-2/.
About Arts Garage:
Arts Garage delivers innovative, diverse, meaningful and accessible visual and performing arts experiences to Delray Beach and South Florida. “Connecting our community to the world through the Arts”—this vision drives all decision-making at Arts Garage, which brings local, emerging artists and established global performers into the local multi-cultural community (students and adults, locals and tourists, people of all ages, income levels, backgrounds) who share a love of the arts.
Diversity is a hallmark of Arts Garage, which provides multicultural programming that promotes inclusion in the arts. #DiscoverDiversity isn’t just a tagline—it is the cornerstone of our outreach programs, staffing, and marketing. Arts Garage is located at 94 NE 2nd Avenue in Delray Beach’s popular Pineapple Grove (33444). For more information, please call 561.450.6357 or visit www.artsgarage.org.
Attached Jpegs:
- Leslie Gray Streeter (February 10)
- Dr. Ralina L. Joseph, PhD & Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith, PhD (April 21)
- Simone Browne (June 16)
Available for Interview:
Marjorie Waldo, President & CEO
Arts Garage
561.665.5857 / marjorie@artsgarage.org
Media Contact:
Gary Schweikhart, PR-BS, Inc.
561.756.4298 / gary@pr-bs.net