Manhattanville: Stories from our Neighborhood
Episode 1: Who we are - where we are from
Will be presented at Chashama Art Gallery
March 20th, 21st, 24th and 25th at 7:30pm
Come join us for Episode 1 of Manhattanville: Stories from our Neighborhood. Who we are - where we are from, will focus on childhood and early New York memories and explore the diversity in our distinct pasts and what brought us to this neighborhood. We all live and work in a small little pocket of West Harlem, but we come from across the country and around the world. Ten Manhattanville residents or employees will be presented at our inaugural performance of this exciting series.
March 20th, 21st, 24th at 25th at the Chashama Gallery
461 W 126th St.
Doors open at 7pm and the performance begins at 7:30.
March 20th, 21st, 24th at 25th at the Chashama Gallery
461 W 126th St.
Doors open at 7pm and the performance begins at 7:30.
Manhattanville: Stories from our Neighborhood is a series of performances of oral histories collected from the neighborhood of Manhattanville. We began collecting interviews of long-time Manhattanville residents in March of 2013. The interviews include stories about growing up in the area: tales of families living on the same street for generations, window-to-window language (the unofficial sign language of 135th St.), a Caribbean child’s first experience with snow, the loss of a friend in a gun fight, the meeting of a first love at a dance, gang violence, and five decades of New York history seen from a window now blocked by the new Columbia building. But stories do not stay enclosed by the borders of Manhattanville (122nd to the South, 135th to the North, St. Nicholas Park to the East and the Hudson to the West). Residents have traveled here from near and far. They have left and returned and their stories take you around the world from secret CIA missions in the Vietnam War, to ghosts and witches that haunt a small town in The Dominican Republic, to adventures in New England, to a war officer’s life in a house elevated over a river in Thailand. In this one small neighborhood are lives and histories which are seemingly separated by differences in ages, incomes, ethnicities, educations, but the stories we have collected demonstrate how united we are in our humanity.
"I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap."
~Ani DeFranco
~Ani DeFranco
Do you live in Manhattanville and want to be a part of this project?
Manhattanville: Stories from our Neighborhood was made possible by:
