About

Archives as Muse: A Harlem Storytelling Project is an initiative of City College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing that “enables the next generation of writers to attend to the stories of the Harlem community at large,” training students to collect stories from local archives, community and national organizations, and our Harlem neighbors. Among this initiative are the Knowing Rivers: The Langston Hughes Festival Archives (ENGL B2031, Fall 2020) and Hurston/Wright Archives (ENGL B2032, Spring 2021) courses taught by writer and Visiting Professor Nelly Rosario (Williams College). 

In both these generative-writing and critical-practice courses, students explored the role of writers as preservers of history and culture, as archive creators and curators, as archival subjects themselves. The courses centered Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and other Black writers, using two organizations that celebrate Black literary achievement as points of departure–the Langston Hughes Festival Archives at City College and the Hurston/Wright Foundation in Washington, D.C. 

As archival storytellers, students aimed to address the following:

What unique forms might an archive take beyond a physical collection of artifacts?

How might the archive inform the creation–and definition–of literary work?

What is the relationship between archives and power?

What information might the archivist/writer choose to include and omit, reveal and conceal?

How might an archivist deploy a “radical empathy” that takes into account the record creator(s), record subject(s), records user(s), and the larger community?

Due to the pandemic, access to physical archives was not possible, and the course was held remotely. Students explored various open-source digital collections, generated new artifacts, and deployed archival storytelling strategies/tools. Class efforts included documenting CCNY’s Langston Hughes Festival Archives and the writing careers of The Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Award for College Writers honorees dating back to 1991 as part of the Foundation’s Hurston/Wright’s Legacy: 30 Years in DC anniversary efforts.

Header image: Muscota Marsh, the Harlem River, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Spuyten Duyvil train station, and some apartment buildings in the Bronx, as seen from Inwood Hill Park, New York, NY, August 2019. Photo: Beyond My Ken

Black Joy as Resistance and Survival

by: Willette Francis

The Black Joy movement is about resistance, survival, and finding joy in a world that doesn’t always make space for you. This timeline explores moments of systemic and systematic racism from 2012 to present that resulted in Black Lives Matter movement and led to the rise of the Black Joy movement.

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Food Insecurity in NY During and Proceeding COVID-19

by: Jacob Kose

This archive about food insecurity in New York City between August 2019 and December 10, 2020 was compiled for the City College of New York MFA Program by Jacob Kose, a farmer, educator, and storyteller living in Manhattan in December 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he had been working at farmers markets, growing vegetables, and teaching garden education in New York State. This collection of “snapshots and maps” features organizations like the Harlem-based organization Red Rabbit and other meal-distribution resources.

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My Family Archive of New York Mets Memorabilia

by: Isabela Cordero

The inspiration for this project is a combination of my love of baseball and the in-progress romance novel I’ve been working on for the past few years, tentatively titled Hitting for the Cycle. As I worked on my archive project, I found that my love for baseball goes beyond me. It includes my family and this love that has been passed on from generation to generation. Accompanying each item is a background story of how and when the object was acquired or the events that go along with the object, as well as a bit of the Mets’ history through this specific viewpoint.

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Telling Rivers: Annotating and Writing with Artifacts

by: ENGL B2031

Telling Rivers: Annotating and Writing with Artifacts is an archival storytelling project based on the autobiographies of Langston Hughes, The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wonder. This project comprises two collections of artifacts related to each work, as well as a selection of inspired writings. The contributors were students in Knowing Rivers(ENGL B2031, Fall 2020), an MFA Program writing workshop and critical-practice course centered around the Langston Hughes Festival Archives at City College. 

Intructor: Nelly Rosario, Associate Professor, Williams College/CCNY Visiting Faculty

Contributors: Francette Carson, Isabela Cordero, Sarah Curtis, Tracey Douglas, Willette Francis, James Grammer, Ian Grant, Maria Gregorio, Grace Kearney, Jacob Kose, Jason Lobell, Tyler Miller, Gabriela Sánchez, Sabrina Sarro, Eve Stewart, Mildred Vargas, Aliza Yaillen

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