Date : 10/19/22

Topic : Cultural inequality, as with social, environmental, education and healthcare disparities, affects health outcomes. In other words, cultural wellbeing is foundational to health, and access to arts and humanities programs representative of a community’s cultures, histories, traditions, misfortunes and aspirations is not a privilege but a basic human right. Yet like food deserts in BIPOC communities where markets with fresh produce are scarce, there continues to be a shortage of arts institutions at which we are at the helm and can autonomously devise programs to nurture community, counter alienation, and express the full spectrum of our lives.

Guest(s) : Maritza Perez

Acclaimed scholar, author, activist and Executive Director of Albuquerque’s AfroMundo, Maritza Perez, talks about the powerful importance of culture as it relates to all aspects of health.  Listen in for a passionate, intelligent, rooted conversation about the need to elevate culture to achieve health equity and wellbeing for all.   

Maritza Perez Bio :

Loida Maritza Perez: AfroMundo Founder & Executive Director

A native of the Dominican Republic, Pérez is an independent scholar, cultural activist and author of Geographies of Home, a novel published in the United States and abroad. Her upcoming book, Beyond the Pale, won a PEN America 2019 Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. Her work has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Latina, MaComere, Meridians, Edinburgh Review, Bomb, Callaloo and Best of Callaloo. She is also the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts in collaboration with University of New Mexico and Rutgers University, IC3-Institute for Communities, Creativity and Consciousness, Djerassi’s Henry Louis Gates Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation for the Arts U.S.–Africa Writer’s Project, MacDowell Arts Colony, Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, Millay Arts Colony, Ucross Foundation and Villa Montalvo. A University of New Mexico Visiting Scholar, she has taught creative writing at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Taos Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf’s Summer Institute at St. John’s College and elsewhere. A former Board Member for the Albuquerque nonprofit Casa Barelas, she mentors high school students and edited Reflections on Water, an anthology of poetry, prose and art resulting from collaborations with elementary through high school students and established artists to foster conservation and an awareness of water issues in New Mexico.