Intro: Newark, NJ isn’t just a place for looking back; it’s also for looking forward. Current Columbia College student Kyra Ann Dawkins wrestles with her expanding understanding of Newark beyond her family’s story and into the broken and beautiful narratives of the hyperdiverse city.
Newark, NJ is my matriarchal home. It is a home that I both love and fear. I do not go there as often as I could and probably should. For me, Newark is an eclectic collection of stories my mom tells from her childhood, a handful of my own memories from visiting family, and the soul of my mom’s favorite song by legendary R&B artist Lauryn Hill, “Every Ghetto, Every City.” Often, during the occasional 7-hour drive from Cleveland, OH, my hometown, to Newark, my mom blasts “Every Ghetto, Every City” from the car speakers. She bops her head along to the beat, recites every lyric, and traces each line back to the neighborhood of her youth. That song is a living lyrical tapestry. It threads its lean-with-it-rock-with-it pulse through matter-of-fact recollections of cringe-worthy 80s fashion trends, police brutality, teen hangout spots, gang violence, good food, and being “unaware of what we didn’t have.”[1]
Though there was a time I’d roll my eyes whenever my mom would play the track, I slowly began to realize how much “Every Ghetto, Every City” meant to her. She loved the song because it was honest about Newark’s beauty and brokenness. For her, “Every Ghetto, Every City” captured a fundamental part of Newark’s oral history, and by extension, of her family’s oral history. My mom left the Greater Newark Area to go to the United States Military Academy at West Point. My mom’s roots will always be in Newark. She reminds my siblings and me on a regular basis that she’s not a corny Midwesterner like us. The “Brick City” will always be one of the homes of her heart, but she has seen too many people she loved die in the darker and harder side of life in Newark to ever regret her decision to leave. Yet even now, whenever my mom listens to “Every Ghetto, Every City,” she relishes in rhythmic remembering.
Photo Credits: United States Military Academy at West Point
Image Description: A young, enthusiastic African-American woman, who eventually becomes my mother, is wearing her cadet uniform for her United States Military Academy photo.
When Dr. Tim Raphael presented the Newest Americans project and referred to Newark as the “Global City,” I was caught off guard. When he went on to share that in one of his 24-student theater classes at Rutgers University, they collectively spoke 17 languages and were from 19 countries, I was outright shocked. Since when was Rutgers University Newark the most diverse campus in the country? This vivacious, multicultural, increasingly affluent college city was not the Newark of my mom’s stories. Overall, as I drank in the dynamic multimedia narratives, everything mixed into an unfamiliar flavor. It was as if someone took the puckering sour out of lemonade and still maintained that it was in fact lemonade, even though it tasted like sugar water. How on earth could my mom and the Newest Americans project be referring to the same city? Granted, a lot can happen in over 30 years, I still felt that this new kaleidoscopic Newark was too good to be true.
Photo Credits: Newest Americans
Image Description: Ras Baraka, the current mayor of Newark, NJ, earnestly shakes hands with one of his constituents, who appears to be a veteran.
In the midst of all this unsettling newness, there were some names, faces, and places I recognized. Dr. Raphael presented the short film “We Came and Stayed: Coyt Jones/Ras Baraka” which depicts a story that somewhat mirrors my own family’s history. Through two parallel interviews with Coyt Jones and Ras Baraka respectively, the video demonstratively etched the narrative arch of three generations in Newark: from Coyt Jones first moving there as a child during the Great Migration, to his son Amiri Baraka growing into a trailblazing poet and activist, to Jones’ grandson, Ras Baraka, becoming the current mayor of Newark. My mom’s older brothers went to school with Ras Baraka. Amiri Baraka’s poetry helped create a new discourse around black pride and power in ways that still permeate through my blood. Though I knew the more upsetting details were left out of the film, this Newark was more recognizable to me. The city as a hustling place moved by the rhythm, burdened by the desperation, hardened by the struggle, and fueled by the grit of the Great Migration. While all of this is still broken, beautiful, and true, apparently, Newark is becoming even more than that.
Dr. Raphael was the first to admit that shards from Newark’s past complicate its present and future. The violence and property destruction during the 1967 rebellion in Newark still lurks in the city’s collective memory and frustrates communal healing and reconciliation. Newark still has a long way to go in many respects. Yet, in the midst of all this, in fact, because of it, Newark is evolving into a hyperdiverse environment, becoming a nucleus of current transnational relationships, foundationally shaped by the Great Migration. Dr. Raphael mentioned that the hyperlocal stories of Newark have direct and dynamic implications for the future of United States as a nation. It seems that this future ultimately rests on the decision of whether we choose to expand our sense of narrative as Newest Americans suggests.
I was initially skeptical of the Newest Americans project. I worried that it would tell the gentrified tales of a culturally rich city on the verge of prosperity. I was afraid that it would perpetrate the erasure of oral histories like my family’s, stripping away nuance for the sake of clarity and public appeal. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case at all. The Newest Americans project demonstrates how diverse evolving oral histories can share space and often coalesce in collective memory. And unless an oral history devalues anyone’s humanity, it should become an integral part of communal understanding. In essence, the depictions of Newark that Newest Americans paints are just as real and true as the ones from my mom’s childhood. All of these narratives collaboratively reveal something of Newark’s essence, creating new and inclusive spaces of shared oral history and identity.
A part of me has always seen Newark as a place of origin and the past, as a family home. Now, I’m being asked to see it as a place of hope and the future, which is an unexpected yet welcome plot twist in my expanding sense of narrative. In “Every Ghetto, Every City,” even Lauryn Hill calls Newark the “New Jerusalem,” alluding to the biblical vision of what civilization is ultimately meant to become. I really ought to go across the Hudson to visit more often.
[1] Lauryn Hill, “Every Ghetto, Every City.”
Kyra Ann Dawkins is a senior at Columbia College studying Medicine, Literature, and Society. Though you can probably tell from her major title that her interests are wide and eclectic, she really hopes to continue learning more about oral history. Let’s just say that if she were to join an OHMA cohort within the next couple of years, she would not be shocked and neither would anyone else.
This post represents the opinion of the author, and not of OHMA.