An imaginative exploration of the historical narratives that shape Black life today, showing how the past is never truly left behind, but is always alive in the present, shaping the future. 

Most people have probably never heard of New Castle, a Rust Belt city in western Pennsylvania. Education scholar S. R. Toliver describes it as “a stop on the road to elsewhere. But as a former resident, New Castle remains the endpoint of my journey, the highway exit I take, the place I go when I say I’m headed home.” Combining an autoethnography of growing up and being educated in New Castle with a remarkable study of Histofuturism, Toliver’s And Who Will Witness Us? reveals the historical erasure of Black people and their literary practices. 

First, Toliver turns to the past, presenting a multifaceted portrayal of Black life in New Castle. She draws from personal insights, archival data, and oral histories to uncover historical disinvestment and the violence of anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity sown into the soil and soul of a city. At the same time, she highlights how, despite systemic neglect, Black people have used their stories to author themselves into existence, creating counter histories that reflect the richness and depth of Black lives. Toliver explains how these acts of creation, in turn, shape the future, allowing Black people to resist imposed narratives and envision possibilities beyond the limits of traditional ways of thinking, knowing, and doing. 

Innovative in both form and style, And Who Will Witness Us? shares how research opens space for Black people to relearn themselves and their communities. It is a reckoning with what it means to call a place, a city, a people, home. 

Cleveland, Ohio is not a location that most people associate with Asian American placemaking. However, on Cleveland’s East Side, multigenerational and panethnic Asian American residents and business owners are building community in the AsiaTown neighborhood. Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland foregrounds the importance of region in racial formation and redevelopment as it traces the history of racial segregation and neighborhood diversity.

Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland challenges ideas about the invisibility of Asian Americans in the urban Midwest by linking the contemporary development of Cleveland’s “AsiaTown” to the multiple and fragmented histories of Cleveland’s Asian American communities from the 1940s to present day. Kinney’s sharp insights illustrate how region matters for Japanese Americans who resettled from concentration camps and Chinese Americans food purveyors, as well as the ways in which Asian American community leaders have had to fight for visibility and representation in city planning—even as the Cleveland Asian Festival is branded as a marquee “diversity” event for the city.

Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland recognizes the vibrant Asian American community formations and belonging that have developed in seemingly unexpected spaces and places.  

In the series Asian American History and Culture