Branden Janese has helped develop programs for The Literary Freedom Project, a Bronx-based nonprofit literary arts organization. She has facilitated a diverse collection of book titles to a community of readers that vary in age, race, gender, and professions, both in-person and during virtual sessions. She has been organizing and curating art and literary programs since 2015, and in 2021 she was granted a NYSCA/NYFA fellowship to develop, organize, and execute a public event featuring local NYC artists.

In June of this year she was awarded an Innovation Grant from the NYC Mayor’s office to plan, implement, and supervise a three month long public literary discussion. One of the selected books was Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman by Michele Wallace. Her project creations have always revolved around one of Culture Push’s missions - imaginative problem-solving, in a hands on and community driven way. During her book events she has interviewed many guest authors with the same enthusiasm that she interviewed guests on her original podcast, Sick Empire. Sick Empire debuted at #76 on Apple’s ‘Top 100’ chart. In addition all of the literary discussions, podcasts, and archival research she has created and completed have been free and open to the public.

PROJECT : LOVE REPARATIONS

Love Reparations is a series of facilitator led literary discussions featuring books that focus on Black love, joy, intimacy, and the future of partnership. The collection of books we will be reading together are laboriously chosen to engage the community in deep conversation on Black pleasure, the history of Black unions, the current state of Black intimacy, and the future of Black love. These literary conversations will expand participants' understanding of partnership, and offer inspiration for us to love deeper and with intention. Love Reparations will read and discuss books that transform the way we love and the way we feel joy. The project’s goal is to inspire participants to lead with joy. This project is desperately needed because partnership and healthy unions are facing extinction. According to Pew Research Center, Black Americans have the lowest marriage rate (31%), and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 45% of all women will be single by 2030. With this project we hope to inspire women, especially women of color, to be intentional about the future of their partnerships. Through a series of literary conversations discussing books on Black joy, intimacy, plus the histories and the futures of Black love, we hope to strengthen the participants' understanding of healthy partnership, and how they are sustained through the pressures of life, especially in NYC. Although there are hundreds of great books with content that can be applied to our mission of Love Reparations, we are choosing three over the course of 2024. Potential titles include, All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collins, Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni, The Color of Kink by Ariane Cruz, and more. Additionally, we plan to offer a digital reading series after this fellowship period to keep the community connected.

Reparative Reading’s mission revolves around imaginative problem-solving, in a hands on and community driven way. Our projects, whether for corporate America, or for underrepresented NYC communities, all share the mission of learning through literature. We love to see New Yorkers from different economic backgrounds, who vary in age, sex, and religions share their thoughts and experiences at our literary discussions.

Founded by writer, researcher, and podcast host Branden Janese, Reparative Reading is fastly growing into the inclusive communal learning space dedicated to the betterment of artists and New Yorkers alike. One of our community members testified: "Branden's book club achieved the rarest of all book club feats: a thought-provoking book discussed with an open and sharing group of strangers/neighbors. Through the conversations, questions, and space that Branden shepherded us through, I gained new understandings of others' experiences and perspectives, and of my own." 

Reparative Reading has partnered with: The NYC Mayor’s Office, The Literary Freedom Project, Brooklyn Artery, Taylor & Co. Books, and most recently, Culture Push.