Michael Staudenmaier’s WHITE, BLACK, BROWN with Johanna Fernandez

Word Up welcomes Michael Staudenmaier to discuss his new book White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago (Latinx Histories), a portrait of the Puerto Rican community’s experience of racialization in Chicago. Joining Staudenmaier will be Johanna Fernandez, author of The Young Lords: A Radical History. 

“Michael Staudenmaier’s emphasis on the historical peculiarities of how race, space, and place are linked makes a crucial and necessary addition to both Puerto Rican historiography and studies of Latinxs’ experience of racialization in the United States.” —Marisol LeBrón, author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket. Please register in advance.

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.

Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Facing persistent exploitation, discrimination, and marginalization in the second half of the twentieth century, generations of Puerto Rican organizers and activists drew on multiple competing versions of nationalism to challenge the racial order in Chicago, one of America’s most segregated cities. Initially, both supporters and opponents of Puerto Rican independence promoted the assimilation of fellow migrants as white citizens. The three-night-long Division Street Riots marked a fundamental pivot point in 1966, ending the pursuit of whiteness and opening the door to waves of nationalist militancy during the 1970s. By the 1980s and 1990s, Puerto Rican nationalists in Chicago had entered electoral politics, building a broader notion of Latinidad even as they softened its radical edges.

Drawing on an extraordinary array of archival material, much of it previously inaccessible, Michael Staudenmaier highlights cultural and political projects profoundly informed by nationalist sentiments, from beauty pageants and parades to protests and bombings to elections and legal battles. Revealing how nationalism became a key site of racial formation for Puerto Ricans in Chicago, White, Black, Brown shows how they understood themselves and demanded to be seen by their neighbors and the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Michael Staudenmaier is an independent scholar living in Chicago.  He received his PhD in history from the University of Illinois and taught for more than a decade at various universities in Illinois and Indiana. Since 2020 he has been an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Puerto Rican Studies Association. He is the author of Truth and Revolution:  A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969-1986 (AK Press, 2012) and co-author of We Go Where They Go:  The Story of Anti-Racist Action (PM Press, 2023), as well as numerous shorter works published in both academic and popular venues including the Journal of American History and the Chicago Tribune.  He has worked in solidarity with the Puerto Rican independence movement in Chicago for more than three decades and volunteers on the Board of Directors of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School in the city’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Johanna Fernández is the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History, a history of the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party. She teaches 20th Century US history and the history of social movements. Her mainstream writings have been published internationally, from Al Jazeera to the Huffington Post. She has appeared in a diverse range of print, radio, online and televised media including NPR, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Democracy Now!.

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ACCESSIBILITY: Recirculation is a wheelchair-accessible space with one ramp from the street level down to the store. Most of the shelves are on wheels and can be moved to provide additional access. The bathrooms are not yet ADA compliant and do not yet have a changing table but are gender neutral. The events are mic’d for sound and videos are captioned when possible. Free ASL interpretation is available for most programs upon request. Please email events@wordupbooks.com to request interpretation as early as possible. If you have specific questions about the space or how an event can be made more accessible to you, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@wordupbooks.com.