Ferguson Is Everywhere: Poetry Therapist Barbara Bethea To Lead "Black Lives Matter, Too" Reading At Barnes & Noble



“Black Lives Matter, Too”, next Monday’s timely installment of Stamford Barnes & Noble’s Open Mic program, features Barbara Bethea, the “Afrikana Madonna”, a poetess and motivational healer with a wonderfully exuberant presentation style (to which those who attended her July appearance at Curley’s last year can attest).

 A creative therapist certified through the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT), Bethea works with Mt. Sinai Hospital’s Sexual Assault & Violence Intervention program as a rape counselor advocate and is an active member of the renown Afrikan Poetry Theatre in Jamaica, NY (now in its 39^th year), founded by the late John Watusi Branch and Yusef Waliyaya, poets and cultural workers in the early 1970s.

Besides helping adults achieve recovery and empowerment from chemical dependencies and intimate partner violence, Barbara’s activities supporting at-risk teens both in health care and church settings demonstrates an inspired dedication to dignity, mutual interest and empathy in pursuit of acceptance of one another and our individual struggles, transcending an oft-bandied call for mere “tolerance” or cynical recommendations on how to accommodate intolerable behavior on the part of officialdom.

While the brief video below, “Supreme Teens”, which Barbara produced in association with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, highlights how critical an open and engaged response is to these concerns, their acute import readily applies to the future of all in an open, civil society, given the portentous escalation of police brutality and killings targeting the non-white population of the country in recent years.

Her inspirational outreach also extends to recorded material, such as Like Manna for the Soul, a nine-track CD released in 2007, and televised presentations, like this 2013 example from Manhattan Neighborhood Network's Can We Talk Television:

Barbara is an adjunct professor at the College of New Rochelle/School of New Resources, Brooklyn Campus. You can contact her directly at afrikanamadonna1@aol.com.

 

Hosted by Frank Chambers, Barnes & Noble’s Open Mic Poetry takes place the second Monday of each month in the cookbook section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the Stamford Town Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

For more information, contact:

 Barnes& Noble

100 Greyrock Place, Suite H009
Stamford, CT 06906

203-323-1248