A White and a Black Man with the Same Name (Issue #53)
This week’s theme is individual narratives – an exploration of all the ways a life can unfold.
Hi friends!
A few weeks ago, during my trip to the East Coast, Andrew and I had the chance to check out the Tenement Museum! The museum, which I first learned about on Instagram via @AshelySpivey, highlights the real stories of the working-class folks who’ve lived in New York's tenement housing. They offer immersive tours, which take you through their historic tenement buildings, featuring reconstructed apartments to illuminate the real lives of immigrants, migrants, and refugees.
When we were there, we were lucky enough to see their newest exhibit – A Union of Hope: 1869. It’s a new permanent apartment installation for the museum, and it’s also the first apartment of a Black family in the museum’s 35-year history.
The exhibit starts with a segment about the museum as a whole. Back in the ‘80s when they first opened, a Black New Yorker named Gina Manuel wrote a letter to the founders. She explained that her own family had lived in New York for generations, and expressed her hope that they would not forget the stories of the Black New Yorkers whose presence and contributions to their city are so often erased. “Their spirits walk those halls and their bones lay in the earth there,” she wrote. And while the founders were touched by Gina’s letter, and inspired to begin a correspondence with her, they also faced an immediate hurdle: The museum operates out of a real abandoned tenement building. Their apartment exhibits reconstruct the homes of actual families who once lived there. The fact of the matter was that Black families never lived in their tenement buildings. They weren’t allowed to. They’d never even lived in that part of town. So, disappointingly, 35 years passed without a single Black family being featured in the museum.
Interestingly, it was an entirely different exhibit, titled After the Famine: 1869, which finally inspired a change. “After the Famine” features the stories of Bridget and Joseph Moore, an Irish immigrant family living in New York in the mid-late 1800’s. The museum used an 1869 city directory to confirm that Bridget and Joseph lived in the museum's apartment, but what was strange was that above their names was another Joseph Moore, except this Joseph Moore was listed as “colored.” The museum saw this as an opportunity to trace New Yorkers' diverging experiences, highlighting the many impacts of race and identity. So, in 2019, they began researching and preparing for an exhibit bridging the gap between the two Joseph Moores. I highly recommend you watch this video for the full story.
Looking into this second Joseph Moore, researchers discovered that he lived across town with his wife and her daughter. Both Joseph and his wife were widows and lived with boarders who helped them pay rent (a common practice at the time). Even more remarkable, one of their boarders was actually a white woman with a mixed-race son. The exhibit engaged with this in a cool way, highlighting how we often think of society at this time as entirely segregated, but the truth is actually so much more nuanced. In fact, it was not at all uncommon to come across people, Black and white, living together! But perhaps most shocking was their discovery that this Joseph Moore lived in the same tenement as the ancestors of Gina Manuel. The New Yorker who’d written to the museum’s founders all those years before!!
For me, the exhibit was a moving reminder of just how important it is to preserve the experiences and narratives of everyday people. And though it took far too long for Union of Hope to take its place alongside the museum's other exhibits, the hard work they poured into creating it truly shines through. During the tour, I reflected on what it might have felt like to be a Black person living in a time of such massive change. In just 100 years, the U.S. went from the civil war, to the abolition of slavery, to Black men gaining the right to vote. The museum really humanizes these events. They’re no longer just some paragraphs in a history text, they’re real events lived by thousands of people forced to navigate their daily lives in a rapidly shifting society. It was a humbling and beautiful experience and if you live in New York or ever plan to visit, I highly recommend you check out the Tenement Museum!!
For today’s issue, we’re exploring the personal narrative, the individual experience, and the forces that shape it all. Enjoy!
A round-up of things to watch, read, and listen to as you head into the weekend.
This podcast from The Georgia Innocence Project and Zapier is one I'm truly surprised I haven't heard more people talking about. The podcast gets its name from the startling estimation that 4% of prisoners are innocent. And of that 4%, an even smaller percentage will ever be exonerated. The show follows the shocking story of Kerry Robinson, who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Highly recommend you check it out!
Netflix: Working: What We Do All Day
This four-part documentary series follows former president Barack Obama as he interviews people about navigating struggles and finding meaning and connection through work. Featuring workers of all levels, from service jobs to the executive suite, it’s a compelling and holistic view of the realities of the American workforce.
Substack: Fragments of a personal history of reading from
This essay starts with a discovery that I’ve also made recently – reading is a “fundamentally ‘unnatural’ act.” It’s a new technology in the history of human existence. And unlike speaking, it’s a skill we can only learn if we’re explicitly taught. In this piece
walks the reader through her own history as a reader, placing it in a larger conversation with lots of key takeaways. There are lots of great lines, but this section especially stood out to me:
“What moves me to write this is a question about the future of reading: about how many people, in years to come, will continue to invest conscious attention and repetitive effort into learning this unnatural act. About what kind of reading will be preserved, and how far it will be practiced throughout our societies. The texts that many of us engage with on a regular basis grow shorter and more fragmented, and our habits of engagement more fleeting and piecemeal. What will change in how we relate to one another, if literacy becomes a smaller and a shallower pool?”
Questions for you + your besties <3
Would you rather work in outerspace or the middle of the ocean?
Would you rather be a famous singer or a famous politician?
Would you rather live near the ocean and become a surfer, or live in the mountains and become a downhill skier?
Would you rather be the tallest person on earth or the shortest?
Would you rather live in a walkable community with zero greenspaces, or in the woods where you need to drive everywhere?
Things to try + share in the group chat.
Note: Links preceded by an asterisk (*) are affiliate links that allow me to collect a small commission when you purchase something I’ve recommended. That said, I can promise I’ll only ever share items I love. Buying through these links is one way to support me and my small biz. ❤️
Do I want to be a parent eventually? Yes? Am I ready for the shenanigans of children on the level of this video? Absolutely not! 😂
I invested in a few quality basics last fall, and this *this cropped long-sleeved shirt was a great find. I bought it in black, but there are tons of great neutral colors to choose from! It’s a versatile piece and can be dressed up or down seamlessly. Love it!
I picked up *Happiness Falls by Angie Kim last October in an attempt to add a thriller to my Halloween reading list! The book is written from the perspective of a 20-year-old woman whose dad goes missing. The narrative style is unique, structured with the main character as narrator, including footnotes to elaborate on the story and reflecting on the ways she did or didn’t act on different impulses as she attempts to find her dad. It’s super suspenseful and had me hooked from the first few pages!
I am deeply committed to “the vibe,” so I compiled 5 playlists for a variety of occasions. Whether you want to enhance your springtime walk, lean into your rainy afternoon, or do something else, I have you covered! Check it out here!
See you Monday!
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I love Angie Kim’s books! Highly recommend checking out Miracle Creek if you enjoyed Happiness Falls. Even though they are fictional, her books are so well researched and educational.