09/27/2021
Romero, a professor of American Literature and American Studies at Sonoma State University, combines incisive political commentary, cultural criticism, and memoir in her vibrant debut, a collection of essays about her hometown of Camden, N.J. She considers the city’s long history, from being a stop along the middle passage during the Atlantic slave trade to contemporary waterfront revitalization projects, as well as the effects of displacement, gentrification, urban renewal, and policing in a city beset with poverty, blight, and violence. In “Demolition Futures,” she visits her childhood home and reflects on the changing landscape, wondering what it would “mean to dwell at a different meaning of Camden’s unthinkable, its vacant lands.” In “Halfway Houses,” she visits the Walt Whitman House and considers the life and work of Eleanor Ray, a woman who lived next door and curated it. Along the way, Romero references a slew of artists, including photographer Camilo Jose Vergara and writer Fred Moten, tactfully blending a sharp critical eye with a memoirist’s moving touch. Elegiac yet hopeful, this meditation is full of power. (Oct.)
"Romero joins a rare breed of writers who manage to convert hardship to healing, and isolation to more universal truths. Readers who chose to move toward Camden with Romero will be rewarded, not with a full explanation for what they encounter, but with an appreciation for how the human resilience she recounts and displays can be an inspiration for us all."--Howard Gillette Jr. "New Jersey Studies" (7/21/2022 12:00:00 AM)Toward Camden is a response to that erasure. And it won't be soon forgotten."--Darnell L. Moore, author of "No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America"Toward Camden is a profoundly moving and necessary meditation on Camden, a city marked by abandonment, dispossession, and resistance. In weaving familial narratives with the lives and deaths in and of Camden, Romero opens possibilities for us to consider the cultural geographies of a city and a people attending to survival. A tender, haunting, and critical work, Toward Camden has implications for our considerations of home, capitalism, gentrification, loss, and love."--Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, author of "Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature"
I've been waiting for Mercy Romero's book all of my life. Camden is home to my family, but there have been too few writers who have turned to it as a city worthy of deep and loving observation. Toward Camden is a response to that erasure. And it won't be soon forgotten.
No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America - Darnell L. Moore
"Romero joins a rare breed of writers who manage to convert hardship to healing, and isolation to more universal truths. Readers who chose to move toward Camden with Romero will be rewarded, not with a full explanation for what they encounter, but with an appreciation for how the human resilience she recounts and displays can be an inspiration for us all."
New Jersey Studies - Howard Gillette Jr.
Mercy Romero’s Toward Camden is a profoundly moving and necessary meditation on Camden, a city marked by abandonment, dispossession, and resistance. In weaving familial narratives with the lives and deaths in and of Camden, Romero opens possibilities for us to consider the cultural geographies of a city and a people attending to survival. A tender, haunting, and critical work, Toward Camden has implications for our considerations of home, capitalism, gentrification, loss, and love.
Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature - Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez
Mercy Romero’s Toward Camden is a profoundly moving and necessary meditation on Camden, a city marked by abandonment, dispossession, and resistance. In weaving familial narratives with the lives and deaths in and of Camden, Romero opens possibilities for us to consider the cultural geographies of a city and a people attending to survival. A tender, haunting, and critical work, Toward Camden has implications for our considerations of home, capitalism, gentrification, loss, and love.
Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature - Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez
