NJBWC Presents: Black Women and the Reproductive Health Crisis

May 24, 2023 @ 5:30 pm 7:30 pm

Join the New Jersey Black Women's Collective and Stono Public Affairs for "Black Women and the Reproductive Health Crisis." This event aims to educate attendees on the burden of reproduction as it relates to maternal health, infertility, and the overarching racial disparities that plague medical practices and policies. Featured speakers include ACLU-NJ Senior Attorney Karen Thompson and Cassandra Jackson, author of "THE WRECK: A Daughter’s Memoir of Becoming a Mother."

In "THE WRECK" (Viking; May 16, 2023), Cassandra Jackson has crafted a profound, unforgettable work about recognizing the echoes of history within ourselves, and the necessity of turning inherited grief into political activism. As she unpacks her own struggles with infertility and her family’s harrowing past, she finds a single common thread: the medical malpractice and neglect whose effects have caused needless loss and suffering in her family. Jackson—co-author of The Toni Morrison Book Club and a writer and professor of English at the College of New Jersey—uses these personal experiences to illuminate a much larger issue: how the medical field has historically failed Black Americans.