Busboys and Poets Books is thrilled to partner with Voice of Witness (VOW), an oral history nonprofit, to bring you a book club that explores injustice in today’s world through the lens of those experiencing it firsthand. This book club will focus on deepening our individual and collective understanding of various human rights crises through powerful first-person narratives. VOW promotes ethical storytelling, centering narrators as the experts of their lived experiences and at the heart of solutions to address oppression. If you’re someone itching to learn more about injustice in the world, someone who wants to amplify voices often silenced, or someone who loves nonfiction and is hoping to broaden your horizon: this is the book club for you.
Our Summer 2022 VOW Book Club pick is Mi María: Surviving the Storm
Mi María: Surviving the Storm tells the stories of Puerto Ricans who lived through Hurricane María in September 2017 and the storm’s ongoing aftermath. We on the mainland US saw the devastation from afar through news and social media, but this Voice of Witness oral history book dives deep with seventeen first-person stories from communities that are still recovering today. These narratives share more than just the collective memory of Hurricane María—they also explore what it means to be a US citizen in a colonial context and the consequences for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Mi María also shows us the love, resistance, and mutual aid behind communities coming together in the wake of disaster.
Join Busboys and Poets Books Director of Operations, Lori Barrientos Sanchez, to discuss these ideas and more with others who are interested in learning about injustice in the world. While we ask that folks do try and read as much as they can before the conversation, we understand that everyone reads differently and encourage folks to still attend if they have an interest but have not read.
If you order a copy of the book from this Eventbrite page, you will be directly donating to the Voice of Witness project! Busboys and Poets Books is proud to be giving back to Voice of Witness through donating all profits from book sales for the VOW Book Club. All event book orders are packed with care by our staff here in Washington, DC before being shipped to their new home with a bookmark. If you don’t get a copy from us, we encourage you purchase directly from Haymarket Press or your local independent bookstore on Bookshop.org. At this time, there is not an audiobook available, and we apologize in advance for the inconvenience. If you are in need of additional resources or accommodations for accessibility reasons please do not hesitate to reach out to bookevents@busboysandpoets.com
This event is free but requires RSVP. Please RSVP to make sure you get the Zoom link to join us- the link won’t be shared publicly so don’t forget!
About MI MARIA: SURVIVING THE STORM: In September 2017, Hurricane María pummeled Puerto Rico for over thirty hours. As brutal as the storm was, more catastrophe was yet to come. Lack of government support left many in the archipelago without housing, electricity, clean drinking water, food, and medical care for months. Years later, Puerto Rico is still recovering. MI MARIA: SURVIVING THE STORM brings together seventeen first-person stories that ask what it means to be a US citizen in a colonial context, how communities come together in the wake of disaster, and how precarity is exacerbated for those on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Weaving together long-form oral histories and shorter testimonios, the book offers a multivocal peoples’ history of the storm and its long aftermath as people waited for relief and aid that rarely arrived and communities collectively organized to support one another in recovery.
Voice of Witness (VOW) is an oral history nonprofit that advances human rights by amplifying the voices of people impacted by—and fighting against—injustice. VOW’s work is driven by the transformative power of the story, and by a strong belief that an understanding of systemic injustice is incomplete without deep listening and learning from people with firsthand experience. Through an oral history book series and education program, VOW amplifies unheard voices, partners with human rights advocates, and teaches ethics-driven storytelling.
