For a century Harlem has been celebrated as the capital of black America, a thriving center of cultural achievement and political action. At a crucial moment in Harlem’s history, as gentrification encroaches, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts in her first book, Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America, untangles the myth and meaning of Harlem’s legacy. Examining the epic Harlem of official history and the personal Harlem that begins at her front door, Rhodes-Pitts introduces us to a wide variety of characters, past and present. At the heart of their stories, and her own, is the hope carried over many generations, hope that Harlem would be the ground from which blacks fully entered America’s democracy. Ms. Rhodes-Pitts will be in conversation with community activist Alicia Garza.

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is a brilliant new voice who, like other significant chroniclers of places-Joan Didion on California, or Jamaica Kincaid on Antigua-captures the very essence of her subject.

Alicia Garza is currently the co-executive director at People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) in San Francisco. For nearly ten years she has been helping to build people‘s power in working class communities of color in the Bay Area and abroad.

Free with MoAD Admission.