North Brooklyn Narratives

Focus

North Brooklyn Narratives is a volunteer-led oral history initiative which seeks to collect and preserve accounts of life in Greenpoint & Williamsburg in 2020 (or “the  plague year,” loosely defined, continuing into 2021.) Narratives cover topics including the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter Uprising, community organizing, small business ownership and other experiences of this extraordinary historical moment.

We are compiling oral histories at this time because every person has a story. Every story preserved enriches the historical record, and helps create a more complete, nuanced and honest picture of our collective past. If we are present in our community today, we can create a record for the future.

 The goal is to collect stories and experiences of the Covid era from neighbors and community members. We seek any and all experiences of people living in North Brooklyn during this time. We believe that there is a history of everything, and everything is history: all human experience and all human creation belongs in the historical record, but so much human experience and human creation is left out of that record, or deliberately excluded to the point that many of us do not see ourselves reflected in our own histories. We can change that by speaking into the historical record and preserving our voices. A multiplicity of voices is the bedrock of democracy. Recording oral history can invigorate democracy by allowing us to speak for ourselves, and describe who we are. We can create a richer, truer, and kinder American narrative.

 History

I began this project in August 2020 because I wanted to connect with my neighbors in an isolated time, and preserve stories from this extraordinary historical moment. I knew we were all living through history, and that historians would look for documentation of this time in the future. Whose experiences of the pandemic would those future historians find? What would they write about this time? Instead of future historians telling us what happened, I reasoned, we could tell them, if we took care to make the record now. As a historian, I know that the historical record only reflects what has been preserved, and I wanted to help preserve the stories and experiences of people around me, living alongside me through this extraordinary historical moment.

 Collection

This collection includes oral histories. We are also collecting any written work, artwork or photography made in North Brooklyn since the beginning of the crisis in March 2020.

 Form of Collection

This collection is digital sound recording, currently preserved on Soundcloud.

Emphasis

This project is devoted to the experiences of people living in North Brooklyn.

Time Period

This project began in August 2020, and is ongoing

 Public Access

Published recordings are available online at https://soundcloud.com/nbknarratives

 Director

This project is run by historian, and Greenpoint resident, Lucie Levine

 Contact Person

Lucie Levine

Email: nbknarratives@gmail.com

Telephone number: (914) 806-0165

Website: https://soundcloud.com/nbknarratives