Broke, Black, Brown, Disabled Book UnTour: POOR Press Book Release 2024

For Immediate Release:

Contact: tiny garcia or Muteado silencio (510) 435-7500 

Broke, Black, Brown, Disabled Book UnTour: POOR Press Book Release 2024

Houseless, Black, Brown, Disabled, Indigenous Poet, Writer PovertySkolaz release 8 books of poetry, HERstory, liberation, disability justice and survival at venues in occupied Tongva and Lisjan/Ohone Lands 

Ohlone "Bay Area" Dates Confirmed:

6pm Sat, Feb 17th Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110

4pm Sun, Feb 18th Black Repertory Theater

Tongva (LA) Dates Confirmed:

7pm Fri Feb 9th Re/Arte Centro Literario

1pm Sat Feb 10th Street Writing Workshop for Housless Poverty Skolaz (@ Palm Tree Hotel)

4:30 pm Sat Feb 10th Echo Lake Park (at Lady of the Park Statue)

1pm Sun, Feb 11th Eastside Cafe: 5469 Huntington Dr N, Los Angeles, CA 90032

The notion of poverty scholarship was born in the calles, prisons, street corners, community centers, welfare offices, shelters, kitchen tables, assembly lines, tenements, favelas, projects, and ghettos—all the places people don’t look for educators, experts, leaders, researchers, lecturers, linguists, artists, creative thinkers, writers, and media producers......... excerpt from Poverty Scholarship - Poor People-led Theory, Art, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth

In Black History Month (February) of 2024, a Press launched by poor and houseless poverty skolaz at POOR Magazine will be releasing 7 books! (see attached covers and below for bios of the authors and book descriptions)

From the LandBack Turkey to Krip Hop Graphic Novel, Kai's Ancestral Shellmounds, Self-Help Hunger Program- the Original HERstory, Cuantas Veces Han Roto mi Corazon/the Many Times My heart was Broken, Flowers to the Dead, The Sidewalk Motel, Homefulness Handbook to Thee Poetz Promise, each of the books released in the POOR Press 2024 collection represents the lives and generations of homelessness, trauma, criminalization, migration, ableism, racism, colonization, and ultimately, resistance and resilience, of the povertyskola authors and HErstorians to the multiple struggles that poor, indigenous, disabled and houseless people in occupied Turtle Island face everyday. 

"Each one of these books are not only acts of literary resistance, but different forms of poverty scholarship/ curriculum and urgent medicine for a hurting Mama Earth struggling with hoarding, gentrification, eviction, ableism, racism, false colonial borders, homelessness, poverty and climate destruction," said tiny gray-garcia, formerly houseless, incarcerated povertyskola and co-founder of POOR Press/POOR Magazine/Homefulness 

POOR Magazine co-founders Mama Dee and Tiny, a houseless, indigenous mother and daughter who were deep in struggle with their own homelessness and poverty, launched a publishing arm of the poor and indigenous people-led movement known as POOR Magazine to create a beautiful and sacred space for poor and houseless voices to be not only heard, but seen. POOR Press, conceived in 1998, was just one of many innovative ways that POOR Magazine has been dedicated to lifting the voices, solutions, dreams of poor people and helps to re-frame the voices of struggle into voices of solution-based visionaries who are teachers in PeopleSkool- a poor/indigenous people-led seminar offered to people with race and class privilege. 

Poetry, art, prayer and liberation is how us povertyskolaz mamafested a homeless people’s healing, rent-free solution to homelessness we call Homefulness. With this 2024 book release we will be working with fellow povertyskolaz in occupied Tongva (LA) and Yelamu (SF) to launch more media, cultural work and Homefulness projects 

The POOR Press/Prensa POBRE Books and their Authors 2024:

Self-Help Hunger Program- The Original Herstory 

By "Aunti" Frances Moore

Aunti Frances Moore is a formerly houseless Black disabled activist, elder, Black Panther and community leader from North Oakland/South Berkeley. She was honored to work alongside with courageous geniuses of the revolutions as a member of the Black Panthers. She continues on with the legacy of the Black Panther party using food as an organizing tool to fight against gentrification and displacement. In her work, she has touched the lives of many community members, housed and houseless, through her Self-help Hunger Program. Frances is a brilliant actor and writer and has starred in Teatro de los Pobres productions since 2016. She is a founding member of Homefulness and the co-author of How to Not Call the PoLice ever and the Making of Aunti Volume 1 & 11 on poorpress.net 

The Self-Help Hunger Project- Original HERstory is a powerful poverty scholarship informed  community archive of a poor/Black elder led, self-determined, food justice movement in North Oakland, written by povertyskola and founder “Aunti” Frances Moore.

The LandBack Turkey /El Pavo de devolucion de tierras, The Sidewalk Motel and the Homefulness Handbook

By tiny gray-garcia aka povertyskola 

Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher, single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled, indigenous mama Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. She is also the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, co-editor of A Decolonizer’s Guide to A Humble Revolution, When Mama and Me Lived Outside, and Poverty Scholarship:Poor People Theory, Arts, Words and Tears Across Mama Earth. In 2011, she co-launched The Homefulness Project , the Bank of ComeUnity Reparations, and Deecolonize Academy.  In 2022, she narrated a short movie based on her children’s book When Mama and Me Lived Outside - one family’s journey thru homelessness which has subsequently won 22 awards across the country. In 2023, she began production on a feature length movie Crushing Wheelchairs based on her first adapted screenplay with an all houseless cast, set to be released in 2024. 

The LandBack Turkey/El Pavo de devolucion de tierras is a bilingual graphic novel/allegory/message/Herstory for children and adults co-written by tiny and all the animal teachers at Deecolonize Academy, focusing on Indigenous, Black/Brown and houseless people’s Land Liberation, LandBack self-determination. The story is told through the eyes of a magical giant, ancestor turkey. The Homefulness Handbook, is a How-to primer on homeless, landless people’s movement-building and The Sidewalk Motel is tiny's first poetry anthology and glossary (PoShunary) of her own incisive language (or "linguistic liberation," as she calls it).

Krip Hop Graphic Novel 

By Leroy Moore 

Since the 1990s, Moore, a disabled povertyskola, has been a member of POOR Magazine, starting with the column “Illin-N-Chillin,” and then as a founding member of PeopleSkool, the Homefulness Project, and Deecolonize Academy. Leroy has launched and helped launch organizations including Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization, Sins Invalid, and Krip-Hop Nation. Currently, Leroy is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at UCLA and a member of UCLA’s Hip-Hop Study Group. 

Krip Hop Graphic Novel is a beautiful graphic novel with illustrations by Ottis Smith depicting the power of self-determined poor, Black disabled Krip-Hop elders and youth convening, leading and manifesting solutions and grassroots community-based, real disability justice. The elders of Krip-Hop crown young Roxanne as the new leader of Krip-Hop Nation.  Find out the surprises Roxanne has for Krip-Hop's elders inside of The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, NY.

Thee Poetz Promise To Be Dope 

By Bella Martrice

Bella Martrice is a povertyskola, Artist, published poet, published journalist, published song writer, and guerilla activist with POOR Magazine and beyond. She was born and raised in the Historically Black Fillmore district of San Francisco. Her writing is impenitent, her passion enchanting. She is Thee Ghetto Poet. Her music is rhythm and poetry literally! She is a wordsmith, painting pictures with words; Beats are another one of her canvases.

Thee Poetz Promise To Be Dope is a powerful collection of poverty, wordz and ghetto scholarship on life, racism, gentrification and survival. Each poem/Word/Rant screams off the page to the reader the struggle of a poor single mama of color, trying to survive in this broken, racist system. 

Kai's Ancestral Shellmounds 

By Angel Heart 

Angel Heart, Quechua-Puna, is an Activist, Author, Poverty Scholar and formerly houseless (now Homeful) Homefulness Resident. She is currently leading a project and radio show with POOR Magazine on 96.1 FM - PNN - KEXU - titled, "The People's Botanica." Angel Heart is an Intuitive-Empath with many years of knowledge & practice in Espiritismu & Brujeria. She is the creator of The People's Botanica - A spiritual wellness & supplies market. 

About Kai's Ancestral Shellmounds is the third in a series of children's books centered in the voice of a first Nations Ohlone/Lisjan child reflecting, HISstory-teling, and revealing the truth about the genocidal California mission system. Angel Heart was granted permission to launch and publish this series by Ohlone/Lisjan leader and spiritual leader of Homefulness Corrina Gould.  

Cuantas Veces Han Roto mi Corazon/the Many Times My heart was Broken 

by Ingrid DeLeon 

Ingrid is a formerly houseless, migrant, indigenous, povertyskola mama of four and grandmama of two, and refugee of domestic violence and false border terrorism from Guatemala. She is a member of the Po Poets Project of POOR Magazine since 2006 and a reportera with Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia with POOR Magazine and a teacher and povertyskola with PeopleSkool.

Cuantas Veces Han Roto mi Corazon/the Many Times My heart was Broken is the third in a series of tragic and beautiful bilingual narratives on the struggle of survival of a houseless/poor, indigenous refugee mama forced to cross three false borders, fleeing domestic violence and poverty and trying to take care of her four children, mother and family in Guatemala.  

Flowers to the Dead

By Lori Herrera 

Born in the chicano resistance of The Mission District of San Francisco (occupied Yelamu) and raised in the calles of Vallejo (occupied Karkin), Lori is a mixed brown Mama, Daughter, Grandmother, revolutionary writer, storyteller, artist, povertyskola with POOR Magazine and a love & liberation soulja, on a journey of decolonizing, remembering and connecting to roots. Flowers to the Dead is a collection of poems, prayers and offerings to the ancestors - a saga of grief and undying love. It's the first volume in a series of writings on death, loss and mourning, and will be the debut publication of Lori's body of work from her poetry archives.