Making History: A Community Writing Project Brings Together a Brooklyn Neighborhood

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, recently published their seventh issue.

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 put 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 photographer come together to produce the journal and document the process. Much of the agenda is conversation, followed by writing, then sharing what they’ve written.

Mutnick enjoys the writing segment the most, she said. “That sense of concentration, intensity. The spirit of everyone in the room writing and trying to put something into words. That is always a very rich process and people appreciate it. Even people who afterwards say ‘I hate writing’ or they come in and say ‘I’m not a writer,’ there’s something that happens during that time period when everyone’s writing that’s very transformative, and then we talk again.”

One year someone videotaped the project, and the group has recently added an oral history component, directed by editor Laura Thorne. Themes that consistently emerge during the workshops are gentrification and how to maintain the neighborhood’s diversity, said Mutnick. Life stories and living in the neighborhood are perennial topics, and the journal also includes poetry and art. The Summer 2020 issue, which came out in October of that year, was produced during the pandemic.

It includes a tribute to the late Aubrey Marquez, a dapper retired graphic artist known as the Mayor of Rutland, who passed away last year at 75; an essay about a friendship that reflects on race, community, COVID and gentrification; memories of growing up in the neighborhood in decades past; observations about remote learning; an account of working at Downstate Medical Center at the height of the pandemic; and a story about facing eviction and struggling to find affordable housing during COVID.

The journal has had a positive impact on participants and the community, said Edwards, a longtime PLG resident, activist and educator. “It is through conversations with community members that you find out how people feel. You can’t do that if you stay silent, stay at home, don’t have a place to come and talk about these issues and not be shouted down and not be looked at as the meanest person in the universe,” she said. “Sometimes people don’t understand and they need to be educated or explore different perspectives. I think that’s how it’s affected the neighborhood because people are coming to the events and buying our booklets. To me, it’s had a tremendous effect on those who’ve come and shared. A positive effect.”

The seventh issue came out in the fall and focuses on food with the theme “Flatbush Eats: Food, Survival, and Celebration.” A gift set of the first five issues is available at Greenlight Bookstore for $30. The project has been popular, with standing-room-only readings and sold-out editions. While Mutnick said she can’t predict the future, her ambition for Voices of Lefferts is to publish 10 issues over five years.

Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of Brownstoner magazine.

[Photos by Alexis Holloway]

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