Please join us as Nicholas Dawidoff introduces and signs his recent book "The Other Side Of Prospect" a landmark work of intimate reporting on inequality, race, class, and violence, told through a murder and intersecting lives in an iconic American neighborhood, that of New Haven Connecticut.
One New Haven summer evening in 2006, a retired grandfather was shot point-blank by a young stranger. A hasty police investigation culminated in innocent sixteen-year-old Bobby being sentenced to prison for thirty-eight years. New Haven native and acclaimed author Nicholas Dawidoff returned home and spent eight years reporting the deeper story of this injustice, and what it reveals about the enduring legacies of social and economic disparity.
In The Other Side of Prospect, he has produced an immersive portrait of a seminal community in an old American city now beset by division and gun violence. Tracing the histories of three people whose lives meet in tragedy--victim Pete Fields, likely murderer Major, and Bobby--Dawidoff indelibly describes optimistic families coming north from South Carolina as part of the Great Migration, for the promise of opportunity and upward mobility, and the harrowing costs of deindustrialization and neglect. Foremost are the unique challenges confronted by children like Major and Bobby coming of age in their "forgotten" neighborhood, steps from Yale University. After years in prison, with the help of a true-believing lawyer, Bobby is finally set free. His subsequent struggles with the memories of prison, and his heartbreaking efforts to reconnect with family and community, exemplify the challenges the formerly incarcerated face upon reentry into society and, writes Reginald Dwayne Betts, make this "the best book about the crisis of incarceration in America."
The Other Side of Prospect is a reportorial tour de force, at once a sweeping account of how the injustices of racism and inequality reverberate through the generations, and a beautifully written portrait of American city life, told through a group of unforgettable people and their intertwined experiences.
Nicholas Dawidoff is the critically acclaimed author of five books, including The Catcher Was a Spy and In the Country of a Country. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and has also been a Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, and Art for Justice Fellow.
If the civic and social concerns raised by The Other Side of Prospect leave you
wanting to make a contribution towards broader community improvement and well-
being, the author believes these three non-profit organizations do excellent, inspiring
and responsible work.
FREEDOM READS
Freedom Reads, founded in New Haven, empowers people to overcome
the challenges of prison, and life’s difficulties encountered before prison,
helping them to reimagine their future selves through reading literature.
Curated 500-book libraries are placed on Freedom Reads shelves in
thousands of prison housing units in every state across the United States.
The goal is opening up life, and the life of the mind, leading readers to
begin moving forward with newfound possibility. Beauty and art can
elevate harsh physical environments. Nothing motivates personal change
more decisively than reading books.
freedomreads.org/donate 2666 State Street, Suite 5-A, Hamden, CT. 06517
FUND FOR NEWHALLVILLE
ConnCORP, a revered New Haven organization dedicated to economic
and community development in underserved New Haven communities, is
supervising a new Fund For Newhallville, directing all donations towards
creating opportunity and uplift in the Newhallville neighborhood. Areas of
fund concern include: access to and preparation for well-paying jobs;
small and minority business development; childcare and after-school
programming; public safety and violence reduction.
conncorp.org 496 Newhall Street Hamden, CT. 06517
WESLEYAN CENTER FOR PRISON EDUCATION (CPE)
Wesleyan University, 25 miles from New Haven, runs the nation’s model
prison education program. Behind the walls of Cheshire and York
Correctional Institutions, CPE offers incarcerated individuals a broad
range of liberal arts college courses that can culminate in an Associate
degree from public partner Middlesex Community College, and
subsequently a Wesleyan bachelor’s degree. Since research conclusively
finds that education is the most effective means of avoiding recidivism
and promoting successful reentry, every Wesleyan commencement is
testament to what people in prisons can become when we invest in their
potential--flourishing assets to their communities before their release, and
after.
wesleyan.edu/cpe/ 45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, CT. 06459
Email or call for price
Email or call for price
