Two great events this week - a great book for educators from Bianca Baldridge on after school programs and public policy, and a lush historical set in Brazil from Frances de Pontes Peebles at the Lynden Sculpture Garden

Events this week!

Tuesday, August 27, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Bianca J Baldridge, author of Reclaiming Community: Race and the Uncertain Future of Youth Work

Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Baldridge explores the impact of individualism, market competition, and privatization on community-based after school programs. Cosponsored by Marquette’s Department of Education Policy and Leadership.

Approximately 2.4 million Black youth participate in after-school programs, which offer a range of support, including academic tutoring, college preparation, political identity development, and even a space to develop strategies and tools for organizing and activism. Baldridge tells the story of one such community-based program, Educational Excellence, shining a light on both the invaluable role youth workers play and the precarious context in which such programs now exist.

Drawing on rich ethnographic data, Baldridge argues that the story of EE is representative of a much larger and understudied phenomenon. She captures the stories of loss and resistance within this context of immense external political pressure and illustrates examples of the damage caused by structural violence that Black youth experience in school when it starts to occur in the places they go to escape it.

Bianca J Baldridge is Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her scholarship examines the political and social context of community-based educational spaces and after-school education. She earned her PhD from Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Wednesday, August 28, 7 pm reception, 7:30 pm talk, at the Lynden Sculpture Garden:
Frances de Pontes Peebles, author of The Air You Breathe

Lynden Sculpture Garden's Women's Speaker Series, produced by Milwaukee Reads, and Boswell Book Company welcome Frances de Pontes Peebles, author of The Seamstress, winner of the Elle Grand Prix for fiction, with her new novel of female friendship between an orphan working in the kitchen of a sugar plantation and the spoiled daughter of a wealthy sugar baron.

With “echoes of Elena Ferrante resound in this sumptuous saga,” (O, The Oprah Magazine) De Pontes Peebles tells the story of an intense female friendship fueled by affection, envy, pride, and each woman’s fear that she would be nothing without the other.

Traveling from Brazil’s inland sugar plantations to the rowdy streets of Rio de Janeiro’s famous Lapa neighborhood, from Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood back to the irresistible drumbeat of home, The Air You Breathe unfurls a moving portrait of a lifelong friendship, its unparalleled rewards and lasting losses, and considers what we owe to the relationships that shape our lives.

Tickets are $23, $18 for Lynden members, and include admission, light refreshments, and an autographed paperback of The Air You Breathe. Online registration for this events closes in advance, but you can still sign up at (414) 446-8794. The Lynden Sculpture Garden is located at 2145 W Brown Deer Rd in River Hills.

Visit our Upcoming Events page for more great programs.