Honoring our Diasporic Plant Relatives: Tending the Vines Book Reading/Conversation with Author Ashia S. Ajani and Community Organizer Keala Uchôa.
author-researcher Ashia Ajani and community organizer and journalist Keala Uchôa discuss lived realities of Black people in the Western Hemisphere through appreciating the complexity of plant insurgency and its implications for more tender living among the decline of Empire.
Book bio: Tending the Vines unpacks the complex rhetorical lives of these plants, most of which have been used as both ugly metaphors for Black incursion as well as powerful symbols for Black liberation. It also highlights the ethnobotanical uses that have sustained displaced populations for centuries. Throughout, Ajani complicates our notions of “invasive” and belonging by contextualizing how plants move, are moved, and, of course, move us.
Artist bio: Ashia S. Ajani is a sunshower, a glass bead, a carnivorous plant, an overripe nectarine. Hailing from Denver, CO, Queen City of the Plains and the unceded territory of the Cheyenne, Ute and Arapahoe peoples, Ashia now lives and writes in the Bay Area (unceded Ohlone land). They are the author of one collection of poetry, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023), and a forthcoming creative nonfiction book, Tending the Vines (Timber Press, 2026). Her writing is a kaleidoscope of her work as an eco-griot and abolitionist.
MC Bio: Keala Uchôa was born and raised in the Bay Area by way of Brasil. She is a journalist, educator, and organizer building and dreaming at the intersection of abolition and environmental justice. She has served as an international correspondent in Ecuador, Brasil, Mexico, and Cuba. She is a frequent volunteer and collaborator with Eastside Arts Alliance, playing Cumbia with Sistema Africanx-Indigenx and a 2026 Malcolm X Jazz Festival and Xicana Moratorium emcee. She is also a producer for La Raza Chronicles on KPFA (94.1 FM), the first listener-supported radio station in the United States.
Proposed Offering:
Music offering, mingling, settling in with light refreshments, altar setup (with some of the plants in the book!), and plug for Eastside programming!
Book reading & conversation
Q & A from audience & book signing & plug for Eastside programming!
Wholesale Book Purchasing: Workman Ordering | Hachette Book Group