Book Talk: Power at the Roots: Community Gardens, Gentrification, and the Puerto Ricans of the Lower East Side, by Miranda Martinez

Through direct engagement with gardeners, activists, and residents, Dr. Miranda Martinez’s Power at the Roots shows the breadth and diversity of the community gardening movement and how these groups inserted themselves into local politics and development to create change. Learn how this happened (and continues), and how Puerto Ricans of the Lower East Side have worked to sustain their ethnic and cultural identity and traditions in a very different environment than their mother island. Dr. Martinez will take us to the grassroots of Loisaida in this special book talk.

Dr. Miranda Martinez is an Associate Professor in the Comparative Studies department at Ohio State University.  She teaches courses in Latinx studies and urban cultural studies. She was previously Associate Professor in the Department of Puerto Rican and Latino studies at Brooklyn College, and has done fieldwork in Puerto Rico. Her book Power at the Roots: Gentrification, Community Gardens, and the Puerto Ricans of the Lower East Side was published by Lexington Books in 2010. Since them, Dr. Martinez has been published broadly, and is currently undertaking qualitative research that examines debt and credit management’s impacts on peoples’ identity.
Co-hosted by the Loisaida Center.
Part of the Tompkins Square Library’s Fourth Annual East Village Arts Festival.