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CUOMO SOUNDS OFF
15,000
AFRICAN TWIST
The governor fiercely defends the Amazon HQ2 announcement in a lengthy op-ed attacking media coverage and opposition page 11
Amazon should strive to hire 15,000 people of color during the next 10 years, our editorial board writes page 10
Follow the path of a Kenyan chef from his birthplace to Astoria, with almost a dozen stops in between page 8
Since 1970 Nov. 22 - Nov. 28, 2018 QueensTribune.com
QUEENS homelessness for Queens: Poetry is an underloved genre—though not by people who read it!—and Queens is an underloved place, but not by people who live here. I wanted QUEENSBOUND to be an informal directory of poets and writers from the borough and a means of laying bare the brilliant diversity of Queens in all its glory.
TRACKING THE BOROUGH’S STORIES
By THOMAS MOODY
T
O BOARD THE 7 TRAIN at Vernon Boulevard and ride it east towards Flushing is to travel through a geography more rich in language and crowded with culture than any other stretch of land in America. It is well known that Queens is among the most diverse places in the world—and the linguistic capital of the country—but often we only experience the veneers of this diversity: the sights, sounds and smells of the various communities’ ways of life. Underneath each one, however, is a deep range of stories: of remembrances of places left behind and newly arrived at; of the manner of these journeys and the attempts at carving out a space of belonging in a new home. QUEENSBOUND, a collaborative audio project brilliantly curated by the Queens poet and essayist KC Trommer, goes about collecting these stories. Fifteen Queens-based writers and poets read a piece of writing corresponding to a Queens subway stop, mapping the borough with a web of spoken images and narratives. At the Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Avenue R stop, Meera Nair considers the discordant realities in which an
immigrant often lives in “In These Streets”: The speaker thinks of her grandmother’s kitchen as “a warm continent I sank into,” but also next door there is “the neighbor in 3c who wants me sent back to wherever.” Former Queens poet laureate Paolo Javier in “A True Account of Talking to the 7 in Sunnyside” at 40th Street on the 7 train, finds his favorite Korean bodega closed, and must explain to his small child the sad realities of gentrification and rising rents. And Jared Harél writes in “All Possible Fates” that while the universe might be expanding, “my apartment is not. This is balance, I tell myself”—a way for us all to come to terms with the confinements of city life. Supported by a New Work Grant from the Queens Council for the Arts, QUEENSBOUND embeds the audio of each writer reading her or his work into a subway map of Queens designed by artist Kyle Richard. The project launched on Nov. 3 with a reading on the 7 line. Attendees boarded the train at Vernon Boulevard and rode it to Mets-Willets Point, where a reception at the Queens Museum was held. After the success of the launch of QUEENSBOUND, we spoke with KC Trommer about the reasons Queens is such fertile ground for storytelling and poetry, and the importance of re-
Sasha Maslov
QUEENSBOUND Curator KC Trommer is mapping the imaginative and cultural landscape of Queens with her collaborative audio project, which collects stories and poems by some of the borough’s most prominent writers and embeds them into a redesigned subway map.
cording those stories. QUEENS TRIBUNE: To me, QUEENSBOUND is one of those genius ideas that as soon as I heard of it, I thought, “Of course! How has this not already existed?” Can you talk about the genesis of the idea? KC TROMMER: Oh, thank you for that! I moved to Queens 20 years ago—first to Astoria, then Sunnyside and now Jackson Heights—and over the years, the neighborhoods I’ve lived in have made their way into my poems. The title for the project was originally a section of my forthcoming collection, We Call Them Beautiful. Every city poet worth her salt has a neighborhood poem or a subway poem. I figured other writers I know have their share of these, so I started asking around.For QUEENSBOUND, I wanted to collect, showcase and share the amazing work of the writers I know who live in and write about the borough. I was thinking of location-based storytelling sites like Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood that embed stories on a website in the place they describe. It made sense to use the subway map as the organizing principle and as a democratic and unifying way to locate the poems and neighborhoods. My love for poetry is like my love
QT: I was also thinking that Queens is perhaps the only borough left in the city in which a project such as QUEENSBOUND could be so effective. Queens’ diversity between and within neighborhoods is a stark contrast to, say Manhattan and Brooklyn’s increasing homogenization. Do you think that Queens is especially suited for this project? KCT: In Queens, it’s possible to walk from one part of the world to the next when only traversing a few blocks—or even just a few storefronts. It’s what I have always loved about being here. Queens is predominantly an immigrant space—something which is being underscored in a hideous way by the prospect of western Queens’ becoming absorbed and homogenized by Amazon, literally at the expense of the immigrant communities who now live here. I want QUEENSBOUND to be a celebration of this space and the voices in it, not a document of a fragile ecosystem on the verge of collapse and displacement. I want to help break down hegemony of the idea that Manhattan and Brooklyn are the literary centers of New York—a perspective that, at its core, always has racist and classist undertones. Queens has no shortage of great writers, but we are not organized the way that Manhattan or Brooklyn writers are—though that is changing. I hope that the project connects Queens writers with each other and shows the strength and vibrancy of the borough’s many voices. I want QUEENSBOUND to put the lie to the idea that either of those boroughs is superior to Queens, which is full of stories block by block. For the Jackson Heights 74th St./ Broadway stop alone, we have five very different poems: Ananda Lima’s “When They Come for Us on the 7 Train” about ICE agents on the train; Meera Nair’s “In These Streets,” a reflection on how her home and family from Kerala, India, is returned to her through the faces of her neighbors; Malcolm Chang’s “Kalpana Chawla Way,” which looks at the street sign and tells us about the Indian astronaut who once lived here; as well as Catherine Fletcher’s “Psalm of the Garden in the City” and Maria Terrone’s “Hawthorne Court,” both of which offer up the private and public green spaces of Jackson Heights as sites of community and reflection. As the project evolves, I would love to include more stories that offer glimpses of the quiet delights and secrets of Queens—stories that live alongside each other, despite being radically different. continues on page 9
CHILD AND FAMILY HUNGER ON RISE, ICPH REPORT SAYS By ARIEL HERNANDEZ In honor of the nationwide Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness (ICPH) released new tools and research to better inform the public about the food insecurity and homelessness issues in their respective communities. One of the new tools is an interactive map, which shows a drastic increase in homeless students throughout the country. The map allows anyone to click on any state to see a breakdown of that particular state’s homelessness situation. The map shows the numbers both from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) and from the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The ED requires schools to identify students who lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. Since this requirement went into effect, records have shown a 92 percent increase in child homelessness. The Queens Tribune spoke with Alexander Tucciarone, the director of communications and external affairs at ICPH; and Kristen MacFarlane, a senior GIS (geographic information systems) analyst, who said homelessness has increased throughout the country. “Homelessness is a national experience but a local issue,” said MacFarlane. “Our research is meant to shine the light, while also giving concerned citizens the information they need to better understand what homelessness and food insecurity looks like in their neighborhood.” According to the ICPH, Queens has seen an increase in homeless students. Of the 312,882 students in school districts 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30 from 2016-’17, 19,777 were homeless, which is a 12.1 percent increase compared to 2015-’16. “Homelessness isn’t only those living in homeless shelters or on the streets,” said Tucciarone. “Homelessness is also those in nonstable living situations; those living in someone’s living room or guest room; those bunched up in one room; those sleeping in their cars.” continues on page 5