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Transhistoria map #stillspotting #jacksonheights (Taken with instagram)
(via showand)
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Today, the Guggenheim Museum launched Stillspotting: Queens, a combination walking tour and oral history exhibit located in sites throughout Jackson Heights, the city’s most ethnically diverse neighborhood. Among the storytellers are author Nicole Steinberg, author/Queens activist Erik Baard, and Das Racist.
The exhibit runs for four weekends, until May 6.
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If you happen to be in the NYC area during one of the next four weekends, please head to my hometown of Jackson Heights and check out the Queens edition of the Guggenheim’s ongoing stillspotting nyc project, Transhistoria. I was asked to contribute a written work to this project, and I’m honored to be in the terrific company of nine fellow participants.
The main focus of stillspotting nyc is how people find a quiet place to escape or call home in a busy city such as New York. Transhistoria focuses specifically on the cultural hotbed of Jackson Heights, Queens. It’s a location-specific project that involves self-guided tours to different neighborhood sites, where performers tell stories penned by ten Queens writers. Hours are Saturdays and Sundays, April 14–15, 21–22, 28–29, and May 5–6, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. with the last tour starting at 5 p.m. Visitors start near the 74th Street–Broadway subway stop (on the 7, E, F, M, and R trains), then receive a map and a wristband for access to four sites that they may choose from the six sites open daily.
Click here for more information on the project and all of the participating authors: http://stillspotting.guggenheim.org/visit/queens/
And here’s a piece from today’s New York Daily News, in which I’m quoted about my story: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/guggenheim-explores-jackson-heights-exhibition-article-1.1060012
Hope you can attend! If so, please let me know what you think of the project and enjoy some Indian food for me.
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“My story is how the neighborhood changed over time...It’s very different than the neighborhood my grandparents and my parents knew." →
Birds of Tokyo poet and Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens editor Nicole Steinberg gives the Daily News a glorious line about her relationship with part of New York City she calls home.
Thank you, doll.
Will write more about this project here later. Needless to say, everyone officially has no excuse not to go visit Jackson Heights in the next month. Unless you live far away, in which case, you’re excused. Or, no, never mind. Get yourself on a plane, stat.
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Here’s a cool thing I’m involved in: Transhistoria, the Queens edition of the Guggenheim’s ongoing project, stillspotting nyc.
Over four weekends in April and May, you can come to Jackson Heights and take self-guided tours to hear stories written by Queens authors, performed by actors in unexpected places. It’s a neat thing.
I’m a little worried my piece will be boring compared to some of the others, as it’s nonfiction and therefore may not be quite as intriguing as the examples mentioned in the website blurb. It’s mainly about how a neighborhood changes over time, and with it, the families that live there, and how we may think we have no connection to the places where we grow up yet once we leave, that connection becomes all too clear. Or something. I’m not quite done with it yet, so who knows! Stay tuned.
Also, if you’re a music lover, the guys from Das Racist are also participating. Funny thing about that is I went to high school with Ashok Kondabolu’s brother, Hari, who’s now a stand-up comedian. Small world, Queens.
Theme: Linear by Peter Vidani
