My world at fifteen was a mix of innocence and naiveté, threatened at times by what seemed like the start of a world gone mad. It was 1964, and I was living in the John Adams Houses in the South Bronx. The violence of the Vietnam War and the fight for civil rights on the streets of southern cities flashed on the television screen, urging me to speak up, to avoid silence. So I started writing poetry. I read books, magazines, and the famous I.F. Stone newsletter that encouraged thinking differently about the world, interrupting commercials about trivial, inconsequential products I would never use.

High School offered some inspiration but no clear answers to the teen angst of 1964-1966. Identity crises and searching for answers occurred during a time when you felt trapped in the ongoing struggle between the conservatism of your family and neighborhood, with no political or creative outlets to address those, at the time, modern internal conflicts. Long before the internet, libraries, teachers, television, and radio were your only means to discover that creativity could present a way out. From where I lived, that seemed unreachable.

The irony is that the path was closer than I realized when I left the Bronx in 1971. That was the year The Bronx Museum of Art was established. If I had stayed in the Bronx, I’d be curious about a party in 1973 where “…DJ Kool Herc spun two turntables to create a continuous dance beat by isolating the “breaks” from funk and soul records.” NPR reported on it HERE. While I spent many Sundays at the Hunts Point Palace in the late sixties, I never thought that the Salsa and Latin Boogaloo emerging from the South Bronx would eventually capture the world’s attention. Today, The Bronx Music Hall helps keep that legacy alive.

I eventually found my creative path in Washington, D.C., New England, and now Southern California, but I never stopped looking back at how the Arts continued to grow in the Bronx.

Bronx Council on the Arts

On a recent trip back to the Bronx, I visited the offices of the Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) to get a clearer picture of that growth over its sixty years.

According to David Lee, Director of Programs for the BCA, their mission is to “…nurture development of diverse Bronx-based artists and arts organizations.” The nonprofit does that by building, Lee says, “strong cultural connections within and beyond the borough, and to strengthen the borough’s cultural ecosystem.”

The narrative that the Bronx and especially my South Bronx are nothing more than burned-out buildings, high crime, and poverty is one that makes headlines but doesn’t do justice to the residents who strive every day to not just survive but to build. 

“The Bronx has always been rich with creativity and the arts,” Lee told me, “I think our main mission is to make sure it’s visible, it’s funded, and it’s celebrated.”

Lee describes the celebrated art forms as more than just hip-hop and street art. He sees the Bronx as a major hub for broader visual arts, dance, theater, media, and literary arts.

One of the most exciting programs is the BCA’s Bronx Memoir Project, now in its tenth year. I’ve been attending the online meetings over the past month, and I can tell you, it warms my heart to see both the creativity and the willingness for attendees to reveal their vulnerability when writing about their lives.

Channelle Aponte Pearson, a Bronx-born Program Manager for the BCA, leads the project. According to Aponte Pearson, the workshop attendees tend to be older, which I find obvious because, based on my own experience, as people age and accumulate a lifetime of experiences, they tend to have more stories to share. 

“Whether that’s through poetry, narrative essay, essay work,” explains Aponte Pearson, “each writer brings a different aspect to memoir writing.”

Those lived experiences, whether in the Bronx or in another American city, are part of what has shaped this country. As I often say, all of our lives are American history.

Aponte Pearson emphasizes the importance, “So the fact that this project is able to document those stories that I feel would be otherwise untold, lost, forgotten other than the people in that person’s life…”

She describes the writers as agents of their own stories.

Many of those finished stories are included in an anthology published each year, serving as a collection of the writers’ creativity and memories. 

For more information on the BCA and the Memoir Project, visit their website HERE.

The Bronx Documentary Center

I didn’t get a chance to spend time with the people from the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) during my visit to the Bronx. I was curious about what I saw online, and when I drove past their building not far from where I grew up in the South Bronx. 

They describe their mission simply:

“The BDC uses community-based documentary practice and education to explore vital issues, stimulate critical thought, and drive social change.”

They teach youth and adults photography and video to document their lives and the lives of their neighborhoods.

“The Center’s programming is robust, with over 50 major exhibitions and hundreds of public programs, including film screenings, lectures, workshops, free guided exhibition tours for over 5,000 students, and community-based service projects for South Bronx residents.”

Visit the BDC website HERE

Creativity lives and grows in the Bronx, and that leaves a big smile on my face.