Book Talk: Voice, Choice, and Action
In-person Book Talk!
Voice, Choice, and Action: The Potential of Young Citizens to Heal Democracy
On Saturday, August 28 at 4pm, the West Tisbury Library presents an in-person book talk featuring authors Felton Earls and Mary Carlson. Join us for a discussion of their new book, Voice, Choice, and Action: The Potential of Young Citizens to Heal Democracy. Compiling decades of fieldwork, these two acclaimed scholars offer strategies for strengthening democracies by nurturing the voices of children and encouraging public awareness of their role as citizens. This event will be moderated by literary agent Jim Levine. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing. Free and open to the public.
Attendance will be limited to 20 people to allow for social distancing. Please sign up in advance to reserve your seat by emailing wt_mail@clamsnet.org. Masks are mandatory for all. For those who are not able to attend in-person, a video will be made available at a later date.
About the book:
Voice, Choice, and Action is the fruit of the extraordinary personal and professional partnership of a psychiatrist and a neurobiologist whose research and social activism have informed each other for the last thirty years. Inspired by the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Felton Earls and Mary Carlson embarked on a series of international studies that would recognize the voice of children. In Romania they witnessed the consequences of infant institutionalization under the Ceaușescu regime. In Brazil they encountered street children who had banded together to advocate effectively for themselves. In Chicago Earls explored the origins of prosocial and antisocial behavior with teenagers. Children all over the world demonstrated an unappreciated but powerful interest in the common good.
On the basis of these experiences, Earls and Carlson mounted a rigorous field study in Moshi, Tanzania, which demonstrated that young citizens could change attitudes about HIV/AIDS and mobilize their communities to confront the epidemic. The program, outlined in this book, promoted children’s communicative and reasoning capacities, guiding their growth as deliberative citizens. The program’s success in reducing stigma and promoting universal testing for HIV exceeded all expectations.
Here in vivid detail are the science, ethics, and everyday practice of fostering young citizens eager to confront diverse health and social challenges. At a moment when adults regularly profess dismay about our capacity for effective action, Voice, Choice, and Action offers inspiration and tools for participatory democracy.
About the speakers:
Felton (Tony) Earls is Professor Emeritus of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor Emeritus of Human Behavior and Development at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
Mary (Maya) Carlson is Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Neuroscience), retired, at Harvard Medical School and a Research Associate Emerita of the Department of Psychiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Jim Levine of LGR Literary Agency has spent most of his career putting together ideas, people, and money; identifying, nurturing, and marketing talent; and creating projects that make a difference. Jim acquires and develops projects in a broad range of areas, including business, science, narrative non-fiction, memoir, social and political issues, psychology, health, spirituality, and parenting.