San Diego City Works Release Event on Friday, October 28th from 7-9 PM for Reclaiming Our Stories: Narratives of Identity, Resilience and Empowerment

By Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew

San Diego City Works Press is proud to announce the publication and release of our new book, Reclaiming Our Stories: Narratives of Identity, Resilience and Empowerment edited by Mona Alsoraimi-Espiritu, Roberta Alexander, and Manuel Paul Lopez.  This is truly a special publication.  All are invited to the release event on October 28th at 7 PM at the World Beat Center (2100 Park Blvd., San Diego, CA 92101), where there will be readings, books for sale, and light refreshments.

Reclaiming Our Stories gathers 19 powerful narratives written by members of the Reclaiming Our Stories Community Writers Workshop located in Southeast San Diego. The authors took great risk bringing these narratives to fruition. These are stories that pulsate with the kind of vitality that can only be constructed out of pain, love, and outrage. Almost all of the authors are emerging writers who reached deeply into their lives to excavate these offerings that, in the end, rise in triumph.

As award-winning author Jimmy Santiago Baca notes about Reclaiming Our Stories:

There’s something so beautiful about writers who write about the stuff of their lives, what made them who they are and what they’re grateful for and disappointed by—this is the kind of writing readers hunger for and hope to get but so much of the celebrity writing gets in the way due to the million-dollar publicity cranked out by corporations feeding the public sleep-lit, the stuff that placates and induces a kind of heroin-nod—but this writing transcends the run of the mill and actually means something, has an internal purpose and integrity too rarely seen—this is great writing, meaningful and with substance and the type of writing that grounds itself in our real day-to-day lives.  Thank you to all of you, I tip my hat for a job well done!

And Elbert “Big Man” Howard, one of the original six founding members of the Black Panther Party, observes:

For me, reading this group of autobiographical narratives was a very rare experience.  Each individual story, simply but eloquently told, reached out and pulled me into it and touched me emotionally, deeply and profoundly.  Many reached out and pulled me into dark places that are not pleasant for me to visit.  Some of these writings brought me to tears but almost all of them had me cheering and marveling with joy because of these writers’ ultimate healing and their victories over the dreadful, tragic events in their lives.

Come meet the authors and editors that produced this remarkable collection.  All proceeds from book sales go back into City Works Press, San Diego’s only literary press devoted to local authors.  CWP is an all-volunteer, non-profit publishing project housed at San Diego City College.  For more information on the press go to: www.cityworkspress.org.

To buy a copy of the book, go here: http://www.cityworkspress.org/books.html