Greenlight Bookstore to Team Up With MoCADA For Reading Series

From Greenlight Bookstore co-owner Jessica Stockton Bagnulo:

MoCADA and Greenlight Bookstore are teaming up to present the NEWSFEED Reading Series, kicking off on Wednesday, July 18 with Uzo Iweala, author of Our Kind of People: A Continent’s Challenge, a Country’s Hope, in conversation with Teju Cole, author of Open City. The series will continue through the summer and fall with two additional events, including a discussion with Amsterdam News’ Amity Paye, a contributing author of Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action That Changed America, and a multimedia experience and conversation with Pat Thomas, author of Listen, Whitey!

The series is in anticipation of MoCADA’s upcoming exhibition, NEWSFEED: Anonymity & Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond, on view at MoCADA from Oct. 18, 2012 to Jan. 20, 2013, curated by Curatorial Fellows Jessica Moore & Nelson Nance. The series will present a collection of visual and new media art that investigates global interconnectivity and how anonymous parties define, construct, and support uprisings in Africa and across the globe via social media.

MoCADA is honored to partner with Greenlight Bookstore on this reading series, which will highlight the Black experience of revolution and social media from Black Power to Occupy, beginning with a look at a major social issue (and its complex media representation) on the African continent. Novelist and doctor Uzodinma Iweala’s book Our Kind of People highlights the human experiences of people with AIDS from all walks of life—doctors, nurses, truck drivers, sex workers, shopkeepers, students, parents, and children—all of whom are all trying to make sense of life, love, and our connections to each other as people in the face of an unprecedented epidemic.

Series Schedule:

Our Kind of People: A Continent’s Challenge, A Country’s Hope by Uzodinma Iweala

Wed., July 18, 2012 | 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Greenlight Bookstore 686 Fulton St.

Novelist and doctor Uzodinma Iweala is the author of Beasts of No Nation, the award-winning debut novel about child soldiers in West Africa. In his powerful new book Our Kind of People, he returns to his native Nigeria to explore the profound impact of the AIDS crisis, producing a nonfiction account that is every bit as startling and original. The book highlights the human experiences of people from all walks of life—doctors, nurses, truck drivers, sex workers, shopkeepers, students, parents, and children—all of whom are all trying to make sense of life, love, and our connections to each other as people in the face of an unprecedented epidemic. Uzodinma discusses his book and the surrounding issues with Teju Cole, a fellow Nigerian and author of the Pen/Hemingway Prize-winning novel Open City. MoCADA’s Curatorial Fellow Jessica Moore will introduce the series.

Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action That Changed America by Writers for the 99%

Thurs., Aug. 16, 2012 | 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

MoCADA 80 Hanson Place

Amsterdam News’ Amity Paye, who is part of Writers for the 99%, discusses the Black experience and participation in Occupy Wall Street and Occupy World in conversation with Jessica Moore.

Listen, Whitey!

by Pat Thomas

Sat., Sept. 29, 2012 | 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

MoCADA 80 Hanson Place

Pat Thomas hosts a listening and viewing party for his multi-media publication that archives the popular sounds, songs and symbols from the West Coast Black power movement of the 1960s. Complete with digitally projected photography from the book and a complete sampling of the project’s CD, Pat Thomas discusses how Black power became a part of America’s pop culture consciousness.