Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 1

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The Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 1
Bronx Memoir Project- Vol. 1.jpg
CountryUnited States
GenreMemoir
Published2014
Publisher The Bronx Council on the Arts

The Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 1 is a published anthology by The Bronx Council on the Arts and brought forth through a series of workshops meant to empower Bronx residents and shed the stigma on the Bronx's burning past. [1]

Contents

History

The Bronx Memoir Project was created as an ongoing collaboration between The Bronx Council on the Arts and other cultural institutions including: The Bronx Documentary Center, The Bronx Library Center, Edgar Allan Poe Park Visitor Center, Mindbuilders as well as other institutions and funded through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, [2] [3] secured by Bronx Writing Center Director Ms. Mario Romano in August 2013. [4] The goal was to develop and refine memoir fragments written by people of all walks of life that share a common bond residing within the Bronx. [2]

In March 2014, The Bronx Council on the Arts held writing workshops throughout the borough with the goal of capturing the great diversity of the Bronx. [5] The workshops brought Bronx residents together from all walk of life but was focused on: youth, seniors and families; and had them participate in a series of workshops. The workshops facilitated by the Bronx Council of the Art director, Charlie Vazquez [1] [2] cultivated one's craft in memoir writing, and allowed them to use it as a tool to capture the Bronx through their prospective and away from the Bronx's burning past. [1]

The participants in the workshops had some of their memoir pieces published in an anthology "Bronx Memoir Project Vol-1". [1]

Bronx Memoir Project Volume 1

Published in November 2014 by BCA Media and edited by Bronx Writer Center Director, Charlie Vazquez. [6] This is published anthology of memoir pieces written by participants in the workshop. [2] [7] [8] A first of its kind anthology that bring readers into the Bronx through the eyes of its residents.

Participating Writers

Arthurs NameMemoir TitleAward
Nahshon Dion AndersonRatcliff Bronx Recognizes Its own
Barbara NahmiasMediitation
George ColonOn a Bronx Rooftop Long Ago
Ed FriedmanChevrolet
Ersilia CrawfordPolio, Mothers and World War Two
Hayley CamachoJust a Quiet Saturday Night
Dahlma Llanos-FigueroaThe Shooting
Miguel MateoThe Next and Last Stop
Siri Edna NelsonItalian, Irish, French Canadian and German
Andrea PurchasBack In the Day
Gerault RotondoBronx Redux
Phyllis BowdwinNew Miracles on 34th Street
Jean HarripersaudA Library as Beautiful as the Bronx
Cynthia TimmsHappiness in the House on 161st Street
Jose CenacEducation Journey
Deborah William-CampsI remember When I Lost You!
Christina Marie CastroThe Day I Play Hookie from Kindergarten
Ann SealyA Conversation with My Son
Kenny WilliamsHow I Got Started in Show Business
Awilda AponteAdventures in Motherhood-1977
Alice MyersonAs It Was
Judio EdysonHunts Point Behind a Glass
Jhon SanchezWriting 'Major Ascension Luna'
Laurie HumpelMorning and Evening
Maria MeliSwamp Guineas
Olga KittThe Products of a Social Experiment
Joseph CarrionJuly 1977
David DueniasUntitled
Steven L. LeslieCowpath Lane
Bernice CoxBest Friend Lost
Orlando Ferrand2000 Bronx Recognizes Its own
Mandy LopezAfter Thirteen Years!
Erykah SolanoUntitled
Brian RodriquezUntitled
Dolores ScarpatoBronx Story
Mindy MatijasevicAre You Lonesome Tonight?
B. LawrenceUntitled
Judy BratnickMathland
Paul TorresThe Accident
Edgar E. CabreraThe Fall Classic and the South Bronx
Sarah SmithFeel the Beat
Hayley CamachoFirst Christmas
Colleen BorisMy Dad was a Teamster Man, Not a Social Worker ... and Yet
Sidra LackeyI am a Tattooed Woman
Ranjit K. SahuLittle Things
Jose QuilesWebster Avenue and Nearby
Peggy Robles-AlvaradoUndocumented
Dale Benjamin DrakefordUncle Brondus
Susan RotgardBronx Memories
Michael CruzTheresa
Lucy AponteWhen the Bronx Was Burning
Louie SantiagoI saw Fordham Road
Yadhira Gonzalez-Taylor, EsqEighties Bronx as Seen Through the Eyes of an Eight-Year-Old
Marte-BautistaEl Misinformed
Sonia Fuentes RestoThe Kelly Street I Knew
Toby Z LiedermanBill's in Calvary
Shavonne BellWake me Up at 6:30
Olga KittJoe and Jose
B. Lynn CarterSnow and Fog
Barbara Gurkin FascianiSchool Days
Lydia ClarkIrene Gertrude Felix, 1921
Jose CenacTrayectoria Academica
Jhon SanchezEl Casi-casi esta vez en mayo

Bronx Memoir Project Volume 2

After great success in using memoir allowing readers experience the Bronx through the eyes of the people who call it home instead of the media depiction a second volume was created. The memoir was published in the Fall of 2017 and has returning voices but feature a lot of new writers who seek to showcase the Bronx as their home, instead of the media depiction of: The Bronx is Burning.

Related Research Articles

The Bronx Borough in New York City and county in New York state

The Bronx is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New York City borough of Queens, across the East River. The Bronx has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2) and a population of 1,472,654 in the 2020 census. If each borough were ranked as a city, the Bronx would rank as the ninth-most-populous in the U.S. Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density. It is the only borough of New York City not primarily on an island. With a population that is 54.8% Hispanic as of 2020, it is the only majority-Hispanic county in the Northeastern United States and the fourth-most-populous nationwide.

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Ron Padgett

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Mary Mattingly

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "A trio of Bronx tomes tell the tales of the borough". NY Daily News. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Writing to Heal in the Bronx". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
  3. "Bronx Council on the Arts Receives National Endowment for the Arts Grant for The Bronx Memoir Project - Bronx, NY". www.americantowns.com. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
  4. "Bronx Council on the Arts Receives National Endowment for the Arts grant for the Bronx Memoir Project" (PDF). Bronx Free Press. p. 20.
  5. Williams, Jaime. "Writing Center wants Bronxites Memoirs". Bronx Times. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
  6. "Collection of Bronx stories to be released". NY Daily News. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
  7. "A Memoir of the Bronx – Written by Locals". voicesofny.org. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
  8. "Bronx Memoir Project features aspiring authors". News 12 Bronx. Retrieved 2016-01-24.