HAPPENINGS
20
Sharon Rose-Calhoun wrote about neighborhood changes in the Fall 2018 issue. Photo by Alexis Holloway.
Making History
Browsing Greenlight Bookstore on Flatbush Avenue
in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens not far from Prospect
Park, you may happen upon a remarkable journal of
memoir, oral history, and photography by and about
locals and the neighborhood, “Voices of Lefferts.”
The community writing, photography, and history
project documents the “life of the neighborhood in
the words of the people who live here,” to quote the
program’s website. If you live nearby, you may have
heard about the journal from a neighbor or attended
a reading for an issue at the bookstore.
Begun in 2017 by longtime neighborhood resident and
English professor Deborah Mutnick, it was inspired by
the Depression-era Works Progress Administration’s
arts and writing programs, which documented life
across America. The journal’s makers, an ever-evolving
band of about two dozen volunteers whose regulars
include coach/editor Brenda Edwards and graphic
designer Frank Marchese, will publish their sixth issue
early this year.
Sponsored by PLGNA and Humanities New York,
among others, Voices of Lefferts reflects the community
and also helps foster it. “This has been a project to
bring people together, understand the world through
other people’s eyes, and listen to one another,” as
Mutnick puts it. Empowered to tell their own stories,
participants help shape recorded history and how
others and future generations will see them.
The quality is high, polished through a process of group
discussion, writing, and help with editing by volunteers
that allows even non-writers to say their piece. All community
members are welcome to contribute, including
former residents and those who work in the area. In
non-COVID times, the group meets at Grace Reformed
Church, the 1893 neo-Italian Renaissance building on
the corner of Lincoln and Bedford. Lately they’ve been
holding virtual meetings.
At a series of weekly two-hour workshops, a dozen or
two participants, a handful of coaches/editors, and a