About this Event
Most people think hunger has to do with food: researchers, policymakers, and advocates focus on promoting government-funded nutrition assistance; well-meaning organizations try to get expired or wasted food to marginalized communities; and philanthropists donate their money to the cause and congratulate themselves for doing so. But few people ask about the structural issues undergirding hunger, such as, Who benefits from keeping people in such a state of precarity? In THE PAINFUL TRUTH ABOUT HUNGER IN AMERICA, Mariana Chilton shows that the solution to food insecurity lies far beyond food and must incorporate personal, political, and spiritual approaches if we are serious about fixing the crisis.
Drawing on 25 years of research, programming, and advocacy efforts, Chilton compellingly demonstrates that food insecurity is created and maintained by people in power. Taking the reader back to the original wounds in the United States caused by its history of colonization, genocide, and enslavement, she forces us to reckon with hard questions about why people in the US allow hunger to persist. Drawing on intimate interviews she conducted with many Black and Brown women, the author reveals that the experience of hunger is rooted in trauma and gender-based violence--violence in our relationships with one another, with the natural world, and with ourselves--and that if we want to fix hunger, we must transform our society through compassion, love, and connection. Especially relevant for young people charting new paths toward abolition, mutual aid, and meaningful livelihoods, THE PAINFUL TRUTH ABOUT HUNGER IN AMERICA reinvigorates our commitment to uprooting the causes of poverty and discrimination, and points to a more generative and humane world where everyone can be nourished.
Dr. Mariana Chilton is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside longtime hunger advocate Tianna Gaines-Turner to share more about the common misconceptions of America’s hunger problem and the work we need to do to end it. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Dr. Chilton will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of THE PAINFUL TRUTH ABOUT HUNGER will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books
Dr. Mariana Chilton is Professor of Health Policy at Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. She has testified before the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives on the importance of childhood nutrition and served as an adviser to the Institute of Medicine and Sesame Street. She founded Witnesses to Hunger to ensure that people who know hunger firsthand can inform the national dialogue on poverty, and she served as the Co-Chair of the Bi-partisan National Commission on Hunger, meant to advise Congress on how to end hunger in America.
Tianna Gaines-Turner is a long-time anti-hunger advocate who has testified before Congress and speaks about the connections between hunger, racism, and gender discrimination. She was a member of Witnesses to Hunger, and has mentored many people, including her own children, to speak up for their rights.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Busboys and Poets 450K, 450 K St NW, Washington, United States
USD 0.00