Join author Maria Smilios as she discusses her award winning book The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis (Penguin Random House 2023), that shines a light on a group of unknown Black nurses who, in 1929, came up from the Jim Crow south and wagered their life for freedom and a professional career, fighting racism, sexism, and redlining while working at Sea View, a woefully understaffed and underfunded NYC municipal Tuberculosis sanatorium dubbed the “pest house,” where they cared for people the city called, “immoral, uncouth, and undeserving consumptives,” mainly immigrants and Black people who were sent there to die. Their decades of work at Sea View led them to oversee the first human drug trials for isoniazid, which became the first drug to cure tuberculosis, the “plague of all plagues.” It was a galvanizing moment in global history, celebrated around the world and the nurses should have received recognition. Instead their contributions were completely erased from history, until now.
Maria Smilios is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, and adjunct lecturer at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She was born and raised in New York City. She holds a Master of Arts in American literature and religion from Boston University where she was a Luce and Presidential scholar. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Narratively, The Forward, Lit Hub, Writers Digest, The Emancipator, and other publications. The Black Angels won the 2024 Christopher Award in literature, which celebrates works that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit.” It was also a finalist for the prestigious Gotham Book Prize and chosen as an NPR Science Friday Summer Read for 2024. New York City and State recently honored Maria for “outstanding service” and “positive contribution” to the people of New York. The book greatly informed and inspired the Staten Island Museum’s exhibit “Taking Care: The Black Angels of Sea View,” which is on display through November of 2024.
Date:Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Time:12:00pm – 1:00pm
