For Immediate Release

Contact: Allison J. Davis  allison@artshorizons.org
                 201-567-1766 ext. 103

                 Lauren Tobin Lauren@PantherPR.biz 
                 818-988-8864  or 310-780-181(cell)

              Arts Horizons Presents a Book Signing with Harlem Native

Paula Williams Madison

Welcome the Author Home at Arts Horizons LeRoy Neiman Art Center

2785 Frederick Douglass Boulevard

@145th Street

New York, New York 10039

Sunday, April 12, 2015

2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

“Not since I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings have I read a memoir so courageously committed to exploring the art and act of finding home. … Finding Samuel Lowe is simply the most exciting, daring and brilliant memoir I've read in the 21st century.”

―Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America

“As the author pursues Lowe’s family in China… she proves a valiant avenger of her mother’s difficult past. A well-structured memoir told in brief, punchy vignettes alternating between past and present.”

―Kirkus Reviews

April 3, 2015 - Arts Horizons, the premiere arts education organization in the region, hosts Paula Williams Madison, author of the highly anticipated memoir FINDING SAMUEL LOWE: China, Jamaica, Harlem on Sunday, April 12th from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm at Arts Horizons LeRoy Neiman Arts Center at 2785 Frederick Douglass Boulevard (@145th Street) in Harlem.

FINDING SAMUEL LOWE: China, Jamaica, Harlem is the moving story of former television executive Paula Williams Madison, a Jamaican-American woman who went in search of her mother’s father, Samuel Lowe—and discovered her own Chinese roots.

FINDING SAMUEL LOWE begins with Paula and her two brothers’ upbringing with their half Chinese mother Nell in Harlem. The family’s life is not an easy one—money is scarce, and Nell and her husband fight often over his infidelities (over the course of their relationship, Nell would twice stab her husband with a knife). In addition, because of their mixed-race status (their mother was Chinese-Jamaican, their father was African-Jamaican), Paula and her brothers look and feel very different from their neighbors and friends. Still, the three children grow up to lead accomplished lives.

FINDING SAMUEL LOWE tells a fascinating story about race, family, fate, and destiny.

Author Bio

Paula Williams Madison is Chairman and CEO of Madison Media Management, LLC, a division of Williams Group Holdings LLC, a Chicago-based investment company. They manage such significant companies as The Africa Channel.  Madison also is vice president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. She spent 22 years with NBC, and was most recently their Executive Vice President of Diversity as well as the Vice President of the General Electric Company. Honored for corporate leadership and community outreach, Madison was named one of the “75 Most Powerful African Americans in Corporate America” by Black Enterprise Magazine in 2005, and included in the Hollywood Reporter’s “Power 100.” In 2013, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. inducted her as an honorary member during its centennial. A native of Harlem, Paula and her husband reside in Los Angeles.

About Arts Horizons

Arts Horizons is a premier arts-in-education, non-profit organization that provides live professional performances and artist-in-residence programs to students in grades PreK-12 throughout the tri-state region. Founded in 1978, the organization’s mission is to foster development of the whole person, and to improve education by utilizing its programming to transform schools into vibrant, exciting places where children gain appreciation for the arts, discover and fulfill their own creative talents and use the arts to improve their proficiency in academic subjects including reading, writing and math.

About Arts Horizons LeRoy Neiman Center

Through a generous grant from the renowned artist, LeRoy Neiman, and ongoing support from the LeRoy Neiman Foundation, Arts Horizons established the LeRoy Neiman Art Center to strengthen the community through the arts by providing quality arts experiences, supporting the skills that encourage life-long learning, and building sustainable partnerships and collaborations through daytime, after-school and Saturday programs for all ages.

Advance praise for FINDING SAMUEL LOWE

“Finding Samuel Lowe tells of the little-known yet epic migration of the Hakka people from China to the Caribbean.  It is an unlikely journey that speaks of the love of family and the blood of a people; the bonds of slavery and the will to freedom.  Told through an intimate family portrait this story is a moving account of a vivid historic migration; an unyielding and dogged journey of the human spirit.”

―Walter Mosley

“A heartwarming quest of a women’s search for her Chinese grandfather—and a powerful journey of self-discovery. From one corner of the world to another, from one culture to another, Madison expertly brings family together, showing that all of humanity is attached by a thread of love. This emotionally rich story is a must-read, to be sure.”

―Harriette Cole, author of Jumping the Broom

“This is an extraordinary story of identities lost and found. Paula Madison's audacious search illuminates not only her own family's story, but a lost world of the Chinese diaspora in the Caribbean, Jamaica's mixing bowl of race and culture, and Harlem's melting pot of talent and ambition. Told with grace and authority, a reader cannot help but feel astonished that this entire world was just sitting there, waiting for Madison to be our guide. Once her story is revealed, the reader cannot help but look at the world differently."

―Ben Jealous, Former President and CEO, NAACP

“Madison vividly and poignantly recounts the struggles of her parents and grandparents as they faced the stigma of interracial bloodlines and tells the fascinating story of the Lowes’ people, the Hakka, a nomadic minority from northern China ‘famous for their entrepreneurship.’ And what a momentous meeting it was when Madison and her American family journeyed to the Lowes’ village in China and met their long-lost relatives, who joyously redrew the family tree, which spans 3,000 years. A profoundly

moving and revelatory memoir of far-reaching discovery and affirmation.”

―Booklist (starred review)