Book Launch: Nicole R. Fleetwood, Between the River and the Railroad Tracks

In her debut memoir, Between the River and the Railroad Tracks, MacArthur Fellow Nicole R. Fleetwood weaves a multigenerational family story into a neighborhood’s history, illuminating the often-overlooked Black Midwest. Join us for a special evening moderated by Hanif Abdurraqib, marking the launch celebration and conversation with Fleetwood, an NYPL Fellow at both the Schomburg and Cullman Centers, about family, place, memory, and history.

Following the public launch conversation, a book reception with the author will be accessible for all with a copy of the book.

Accessibility requests can be made by e-mail [email protected].

Signed copies of Between the River and the Railroad Tracks will be available for purchase from the Schomburg Shop in Harlem.

Nicole R. Fleetwood is a writer, art curator, and professor at New York University. A MacArthur Fellow, she is the authorMarking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other books includeOn Racial Icons and Troubling Vision. She has curated exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Art and Practice (LA), the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Brown Arts Institute, Aperture Foundation, and Zimmerli Museum of Art. Her work has been supported by Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, American Council of Learned Societies, the Art for Justice Fund, Mellon Foundation, the Gordon Parks Foundation, Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library, Whiting Foundation, Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture, Ford Foundation, and Denniston Hill Residency. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Photo credit: Laylah Amatalluh Barrayn

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant. His poetry and essays have been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

Hanif has two award-winning poetry collections, The Crown Ain't Worth Much and A Fortune for Your Disaster, a collection of essays, They Can't K*ll Us Until They K*ll Us, and released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest in 2019, which became a New York Times bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. In 2021. Hanif released the book A Little Devil In America, which won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2024, Hanif released There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, named a best book of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, and Book Riot, among others..

Meticulously crafted and unflinchingly vulnerable, Nicole R. Fleetwood’s multigenerational family portrait braids the intimate life of a neighborhood with the historic arc that shaped it to offer an untold story of the black Midwest.

In 1973, Hamilton, Ohio, was a mill town so typical it prided itself on being quintessentially American. In harder times, it proved to be a bellwether. Here, young Nicole is born into a fourth-generation household in the Second Ward, a segregated neighborhood between the river and the railroad tracks.

In this tight-knit community, most of Nicole’s neighbors are like her relatives: large, intergenerational families a few decades up from the South. They build their own institutions, create music with global influence, and uphold a code of conduct centered around safety and belonging. But the legacy of slavery and the entrenched racism of the Midwest cast a shadow over the Second Ward. The Fleetwoods bear their struggles as an ancestral curse, one that dooms their menfolk and burdens their women. The family lore echoes in Nicole’s earliest memories.

Nicole nurtures her intellectual curiosity and independence, dreaming of college and the world beyond. But she fears that leaving the Second Ward means abandoning everything she’s known—the neighborhood map that kept her safe, the community that raised her, and the family that loves her. In a powerful testament to black love and inheritance, Between the River and the Railroad Tracks asks whether we can ever leave home.

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FIRST COME, FIRST SEATED Events are free and open to all, but due to space constraints registration is requested. Registered guests are given priority check-in 15 to 30 minutes before start time. After the event starts all registered seats are released regardless of registration, so we recommend that you arrive early. We generally overbook to ensure a full house.

GUESTS Please note that holding seats in the Langston Hughes Auditorium is strictly prohibited and there is no food or drinks allowed.

E-TRANSPORTATION NYPL policy prohibits electric transportation devices (e.g., motorbikes, e-bikes, e-scooters, e-skateboards) from being brought into or stored at library sites for any length of time, as this is the best way to keep our spaces & people safe.

AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING Programs are photographed and recorded by the Schomburg Center. Attending this event indicates your consent to being filmed/photographed and your consent to the use of your recorded image for any all purposes of the New York Public Library.

PRESS Please send all press inquiries (photo, video, interviews, audio-recording, etc) at least 24-hours before the day of the program to Leah Drayton at [email protected].

Please note that personal and professional video recordings are prohibited without expressed consent.

Event venue & nearby stays

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, United States

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