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." \;
\nAbout the Author:
\nNicole R. Fleetwood&nbs p\;is a writer\, art curator\, and professor at New York Universi ty. A MacArthur Fellow\, she is the author \;Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration\, winner of the 2020 National Book Crit ics Circle Award. Her other books include \;On Racial Icons&n bsp\;and \;Troubling Vision. She has curated exhibitions at M oMA PS1\, Art \;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&rsqu o\;s Bellagio Center\, American Council of Learned Societies\, the Art for Justice Fund\, Mellon Foundation\, the Gordon Parks Foundation\, Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library\, Whiting F oundation\, Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture\, Ford Foundati on\, and Denniston Hill Residency. She is an elected member of the America n Academy of Arts and Sciences. Follow Nicole's work here.
\nMeticulously crafted and unflinching ly vulnerable\, Nicole R. Fleetwood&rsquo\;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.
\nIn 1973\ , Hamilton\, Ohio\, was a mill town so typical it prided itself on being q uintessentially American. In harder times\, it proved to be a bellwether. Here\, young Nicole is born into a fourth-generation household in the Seco nd Ward\, a segregated neighborhood between the river and the railroad tra cks.
\nIn this tight-knit community\, most of Nicole&rsquo\;s neighb ors are like her relatives: large\, intergenerational families a few decad es up from the South. They build their own institutions\, create music wit h global influence\, and uphold a code of conduct centered around safety a nd belonging. \; \;
\nBut the legacy of slavery and the entr enched racism of the Midwest cast a shadow over the Second Ward. The Fleet woods bear their struggles as an ancestral curse\, one that dooms their me nfolk and burdens their women. The family lore echoes in Nicole&rsquo\;s e arliest memories. \;
\nAs Nicole grows up\, the curse spreads th rough her community. She witnesses the Second Ward undergo devastating cha nges that impact her family and neighbors. The loss of factory jobs\, grow ing political divides\, and the crack epidemic wreak havoc\, seeping throu gh the walls of her family home and replacing the sense of community and f amiliarity with destitution and violence. \;
\nNicole nurtures her intellectual curiosity and independence\, dreaming of college and the world beyond. But she fears that leaving the Second Ward means abandoning everything she&rsquo\;s known&mdash\;the neighborhood map that kept her sa fe\, the community that raised her\, and the family that loves her. In a p owerful testament to black love and inheritance\, \;Between the Ri ver and the Railroad Tracks \;asks whether we can ever leave home .
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