{"id":40482,"date":"2016-04-25T12:33:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T16:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=40482"},"modified":"2019-04-22T20:20:18","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T00:20:18","slug":"my-seneca-village-marilyn-nelson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/my-seneca-village-marilyn-nelson\/","title":{"rendered":"My Seneca Village by Marilyn Nelson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MySeneca Village is real<\/a>. Or was real. Bordered by West 82nd and 89th streets, and between Seventh and Eighth avenues in New York City’s Upper West Side, “Seneca Village was Manhattan’s first significant community of African American property owners.”<\/p>\n

Founded in 1825, the community \u2013 which would come to include Irish and German immigrants and even a few Native Americans \u2013 would last for just 32 years, “completely erased by the creation of Central Park” in 1857. During those three decades-plus, the multi-ethnic, multicultural community had 264 residents, according to the 1885 New York State Census; within its borders were\u00a0three churches, a school, several cemeteries, multiple businesses, some 70 homes, and even an apple orchard.<\/p>\n

Mega award-winning poet extraordinaire Marilyn Nelson<\/a> found\u00a0this\u00a0“portrait of a community” growing in her mind: “For several years I lived, with great delight, a sort of parallel existence, with characters I made up to fit the names and identifying labels I found in census records of Seneca Village.” Her imagination led to creation, bestowing possible lives onto long-forgotten names, resulting in an illuminating collection of stories of joy and hardship, hope and failure, bounty and loss.\u00a0Her\u00a0<\/em>Seneca Village is undoubtedly one of the most thought-provoking, intriguing, fascinating books I’ve read this\u00a0year.<\/p>\n

Village founders Andrew Williams and Epiphany Davis\u00a0\u2013 the first African American landowners there\u00a0\u2013 are, respectively, “a proud man that comes home with a decent wage” and a “conjure-man”\u00a0who “offer[s] what I see \/ of what’s to come.” Levin Smith presides over the “African Mutual Relief Society,” while Sarah Mathila White braids hair and shares the town’s news. Charlot Wilson stays bedside, keeping company as the dying succumb to 1832’s cholera epidemic. Mathilda Polk draws much attention as a “high-yellow” young woman, the product of “peoples who hate each other … \/ the lamb and lion [who] lay down side by side.” Irish immigrant couple Joseph and Margaret Cavanaugh who escaped famine, stand together “Counting Blessings” over their eight children, “none of them shivering, everyone fed.”<\/p>\n

The decades pass, people marry, birth children,\u00a0grow\u00a0families, bury loved ones … until they are all forced to leave by “The Law of Eminent Domain” \u2013 with language just senseless enough for Nelson to\u00a0create a penultimate “nonsense poem … made up of phrases taken from …” the actual legislation\u00a0itself.<\/p>\n

In her “About the Poems” afterword, Nelson explains the various poetic forms she used to bring her Village to life\u00a0\u2013 reflecting the diversity of the community though a wide variety of rigid, playful, metered, lyrical\u00a0verses throughout: “Poets are interested in stuff like this,” she muses. “Maybe you’ll find it interesting, too.” Such understatement indeed.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Middle Grade, Young Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seneca Village is real. Or was real. Bordered by West 82nd and 89th streets, and between Seventh and Eighth avenues in New York City’s Upper West Side, “Seneca Village was Manhattan’s first significant community of African American property owners.” Founded in 1825, the community \u2013…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,6,30,94,7933,31],"tags":[6608,22,10,11,24,51,6890,6891,28],"class_list":["post-40482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-black-african-american","category-fiction","category-middle-grade-readers","category-poetry","category-verse-novel","category-young-adult-readers","tag-bookdragon","tag-civil-rights","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-historical","tag-identity","tag-marilyn-nelson","tag-my-seneca-village","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nMy Seneca Village by Marilyn Nelson - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/my-seneca-village-marilyn-nelson\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Seneca Village by Marilyn Nelson - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Seneca Village is real. 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