The Malden Public Library is excited to be hosting an author talk with Debra Bruno and Malden resident Eleanor C. Mire on Monday, December 9th from 6-7pm, in the Maccario Room. This will be a compelling discussion on family history, slavery in the north-Atlantic, and the challenges of racial reconciliation. This event will be dual in-person and on Zoom; a Zoom link will be sent out the day of the event. Bruno will be joining us via Zoom, and Mire will be joining us in person. Registration is required. Register at: bit.ly/events-mpl.

From Cornell University Press:

“A Hudson Valley Reckoning tells the long-ignored story of slavery’s history in upstate New York through Debra Bruno’s absorbing chronicle that uncovers her Dutch ancestors’ slave-holding past and leads to a deep connection with the descendants of the enslaved people her family owned.

Bruno, who grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley knowing little about her Dutch heritage, was shaken when a historian told her that her Dutch ancestors were almost certainly slaveholders. Driven by this knowledge, Bruno began to unearth her family’s past. In the last will and testament of her ancestor, she found the first evidence: human beings bequeathed to his family along with animals and furniture. The more she expanded her family tree, the more enslavers she found. She reached out to Black Americans tracing their own ancestry, and by serendipitous luck became friends with Eleanor C. Mire, a descendent of a woman enslaved by Bruno’s Dutch ancestors.

A Hudson Valley Reckoning recounts Bruno’s journey into the nearly forgotten history of Northern slavery and of the thousands of enslaved people brought in chains to Manhattan and the Hudson Valley. With the help of Mire, who provides a moving epilogue, Debra Bruno tells the story of white and Black lives impacted by the stain of slavery and its long legacy of racism, as she investigates the erasure of the uncomfortable truths about our family and national histories.”

“Arriving in America in 1947, 12 year-old Gustawa Singer carried the heaviness of the three-year wartime separation from her father. Desperate to piece together their stolen years, he sat her down and meticulously transcribed her memories in a seven-page handwritten record. They never spoke about their collective torture again. Hidden in a basement for 35 years, this forgotten testimony became the blueprint for Singer Applefield’s journey of self-discovery.” From janetapplefield.com

Working with the non-profit, Facing History and Ourselves, and the
Massachusetts Cultural Council, she has spoken at hundreds of venues on
her experiences as a child hidden during the Holocaust and the importance
of standing up to bigotry and hate.

Janet Applefield will be at the Malden Public Library Monday September 23rd 6-7pm to discuss her book Becoming Janet. Books will be available for purchase at the event. Registration not required  but requested.
https://bit.ly/mpl-applefield