Nicole R. Fleetwood\, Paulette Goddard Pro fessor of Media\, Culture\, and Communication at New York University\, wri ter\, curator\, and MacArthur Fellow\, returns to the Bexley Public Librar y to celebrate the release of her memoir\, \;Between the River and the Railroad Tracks. Praised as \;"meticulously crafted and unfl inchingly vulnerable\, Nicole R. Fleetwood's multigenerational family port rait braids the intimate life of a neighborhood with the historic arc that shaped it to offer an untold story of the black Midwest." Rachel Cargle\, author of \;A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir and Manifesto on R eimagining\, will moderate the conversation.
\nAbout th e Author:
\nNicole R. Fleetwood \;is a writer\, art curator\, and professor at New York University. A MacArthur Fellow\, she is the author \;Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration\, winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award . Her other books include \;On Racial Icons \;and \;< em>Troubling Vision. She has curated exhibitions at MoMA PS1\, Art&nb sp\;and Practice (LA)\, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center\, Brown Arts Institute\, Aperture Foundation\, and Zimmerli Museum of Art. Her work has been supported by Rockefeller Foundation&rsquo\;s Bellagio Ce nter\, American Council of Learned Societies\, the Art for Justice Fund\, Mellon Foundation\, the Gordon Parks Foundation\, Cullman Center for Schol ars and Writers of the New York Public Library\, Whiting Foundation\, Scho mburg Center for Research on Black Culture\, Ford Foundation\, and Dennist on Hill Residency. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Art s and Sciences. Follow Nicole's work here.
\nAbout the M oderator:
\nRachel Elizabeth Cargle is an author\, entrepreneur\, and philanthropist. She is the founder and board p resident of The Loveland Foundation\, which has funded more than 210 thousand hours of therapy for Black women and girls nationwide\, and the author of A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagin ing. A native of Akron\, Ohio\, she owns Elizabeth's Bookshop a nd Writing Centre and leads the literary consultancy Ninth House. Her public scholarship on race\, history\, and care has reached millions.
\ nAbout the Book:
\nMeticulously crafted and unfl inchingly vulnerable\, Nicole R. Fleetwood&rsquo\;s multigenerational fami ly portrait braids the intimate life of a neighborhood with the historic a rc that shaped it to offer an untold story of the black Midwest.
\nI n 1973\, Hamilton\, Ohio\, was a mill town so typical it prided itself on being quintessentially American. In harder times\, it proved to be a bellw ether. Here\, young Nicole is born into a fourth-generation household in t he Second Ward\, a segregated neighborhood between the river and the railr oad tracks.
\nIn this tight-knit community\, most of Nicole&rsquo\;s neighbors are like her relatives: large\, intergenerational families a fe w decades up from the South. They build their own institutions\, create mu sic with global influence\, and uphold a code of conduct centered around s afety and belonging. \; \;
\nBut the legacy of slavery and t he entrenched racism of the Midwest cast a shadow over the Second Ward. Th e Fleetwoods bear their struggles as an ancestral curse\, one that dooms t heir menfolk and burdens their women. The family lore echoes in Nicole&rsq uo\;s earliest memories. \;
\nAs Nicole grows up\, the curse spr eads through her community. She witnesses the Second Ward undergo devastat ing changes that impact her family and neighbors. The loss of factory jobs \, growing political divides\, and the crack epidemic wreak havoc\, seepin g through the walls of her family home and replacing the sense of communit y and familiarity with destitution and violence. \;
\nNicole nu rtures her intellectual curiosity and independence\, dreaming of college a nd the world beyond. But she fears that leaving the Second Ward means aban doning everything she&rsquo\;s known&mdash\;the neighborhood map that kept her safe\, the community that raised her\, and the family that loves her. In a powerful testament to black love and inheritance\, \;Between the River and the Railroad Tracks&nb sp\;asks whether we can ever leave home.
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