WordUpBooks's blog

By Carolina Valencia

Thank you so much to all the readers and participants who came through to la gran fiesta virtual con Jaquira Díaz, Melissa Rivero, Carolina De Robertis, Lilliam Rivera, Angie Cruz, Natalia Sylvester, y Lupita Aquino, in support of local bookstores during these times! We at Word Up are so grateful the event went so well and felt the love from all the readers.

As the brainchild of featured author Angie Cruz, El Gran Combo came together in a few days in support of Latinx authors and three independent bookstores across NYC—The Lit. Bar, Mil Mundos Books, and Word Up Community Bookshop Librería Comunitaria. Personally, I had the great opportunity of helping set up this event and designing the graphics for it. I had previously worked with Angie on Word Up’s program Uptown Reads, which featured Dominicana as its first pick back in the Fall of 2019 and knew this event would be great due to her involvement.

From the chat, we could tell you were all craving a recap of the many golden nuggets dropped by the authors, so here it is!

April 1 is Census Day! If you haven't already filled out the census, please do at my2020census.gov, then let us know that you did here.

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With all the news understandably focused on coronavirus, why are we bothering to remind our community to fill out this once-in-a-decade survey? Word Up collective member Taylor Lampe (MPH, Epidemiology, '19) explains:   The 2020 Census is still happening in the midst of coronavirus, and the U.S. Census Bureau is committed to safely collecting responses to ensure that everyone is counted. Many of us may be wondering, though, why does the 2020 Census matter when there are so many pressing coronavirus needs? In fact, completing the 2020 Census is a critical step that we can all take to support coronavrius response—and here’s why!

[See the full 3/27/20 newsletter—with books & online events!—here.]

Hi neighbors, How are you? We hope that you are staying home if you can. We miss you and would like to check in. So, we are having an Uptown Check-In today on Zoom, 8pm–9pm! No agenda, just BYOB and stop by whenever you can for that hour. At 8pm, click this link to join. Because we could all use more togetherness, we are doing our best to bring back events. Join us for the return of Word Up Story Time this Saturday @ 11am! On Instagram Live, Emmanuel Abreu will be reading the bilingual children's picture book that the Word Up Collective created together in 2013, Home at Word Up: A Story of a Bookshop in Washington Heights/En casa en Word Up:

[See the full 3/25/2020 newsletter—with books and more!—here.]

Hi Word Up family, We haven't been able to see you at the shop since we closed (temporarily!) on March 13th. We hope you all are staying home if you can, and taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. These are tough times right now and we're all trying to stay sane—please call 888-NYC-WELL if you are feeling stressed or emotional. As a collective, we're working to compile info that will complement what is already available out there, including aggregating educational resources en español.

Community is in our name. And while we normally want to spread love the Uptown way . . . right now, “community spread” of COVID-19 is precisely what we need to quash. While one may seem healthy and/or asymptomatic, it’s still possible for them to put others at risk. And we don’t want to do that—to our fellow collective members, to our visitors and customers, to our events organizers and authors and community partners. While we want to remain open as a resource for our communities, we would be potentially compromising the health of those same communities. . . . It would be a huge violation of our own safe space policy!