Glenn Ligon is a renowned artist who gives us new ways of seeing American history, literature, and society. How can we see him better through the lens of childhood? In this episode of Your Hometown, Glenn speaks with Kevin Burke about his experiences growing up in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 70s, including his hour-and-a-half commute each way to Walden, the private school he attended on the Upper West Side from the first grade on. His mother made going to Walden possible for Glenn and his brother, and it involved sacrifices and risks. A commute is one thing. Where it can lead, another.

How would this change the landscape for Glenn and his family? Where would Glenn most feel at home, outside and inside, in his New York? Where would he feel safe, or watched, or like a stranger? And how does a city like New York, with its layer upon layer of construction, class, and culture, define not just the literal paths we take growing up, but the existential ones?

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

“Early 1970s New York Subway” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16a6SKjwZM

“Zora Neale Hurston '28 Sings Halihmuhfack” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut0xmfgcK3w

“James Baldwin: Un Étranger dans le Village" (1962) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hPEaxeJWZQ

James Baldwin on Love and Sexuality from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZPmT3lk6cU

Clip from "The Naked Civil Servant" (1975) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlxn3F2tIWg

Music

Beastie Boys - Shake Your Rump (1989)

Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting (1974)

Mahalia Jackson - Silent Night (1962)

Cool Change - Streets of The Bronx (1993)

Cher - Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves (1971)

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins - I Put A Spell on You (1956)

Artwork

Charlotte Yiu and Nick Gregg

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Special Thanks

Jonah Groeneboer and Lisa Koli at Glenn Ligon Studio; and Tate Dougherty and the team at Hauser & Wirth

This is the story of an “inquiring mind” who happens to be a journalist. Sewell Chan is the new editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune. But before his move to Austin, and before his previous roles at the L.A. Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, he was a kid growing up in an immigrant family in the outer boroughs of New York City, where his father drove a taxicab. Both his parents had seen a lot in their lives – but said little. Their New York was the New York of work, of their community, and of striving for a quiet, peaceful place to live, which ended up being in Queens. Yet when you meet Sewell, it's surprising that he came from such a quiet place, because he’s so engaged with the world, with history, with how people live and how things work. In this episode, Kevin Burke talks with Sewell about his coming-of-age years in New York, the meaning of home, and what the windows and doors were from where his family lived out to the larger world.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

WPIX Special Report: Blackout '77-City of Darkness from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0LV0zWFsVE

Broadway's Lost Treasures - Me and My Girl from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swX0qlHRDV0

Dolora Zajick - Amneris - AIDA - MET 1989 from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZNN0VqaSlE

Bill Clinton 1992 DNC Acceptance Speech from https://www.c-span.org/video/?27166-1/bill-clinton-1992-acceptance-speech

1998 Harvard Commencement from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9Uj6nq4Y4

Times’s City Room Advertisement from  https://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/1194817108917/a-changing-metropolis.html

Music

Frank Sinatra - New York, New York (1980)

Ella Fitzgerald - Manhattan (1965)

Willie Nelson - Texas on a Saturday Night (1985)

Illustration

Charlotte Yiu

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Tiffany Cabán captured national headlines when she came within a hair’s breadth of winning the primary for district attorney in her hometown of Queens, New York, in 2019. It was an audacious move: a young, out-of-nowhere candidate running in her home borough against the establishment on a platform calling for major changes to the system. Snatching a moral victory from the jaws of electoral defeat, Tiffany kept speaking out. Two years later, she’s just won a seat on the New York City Council, where she will have a voice in the debate about what kind of hometown New York wants to be.

In this interview, host Kevin Burke talks with Tiffany about her coming-of-age story and what she experienced back there that made her someone who gets up and chooses to march on the front lines, has the skills to organize – and then has the fire in her soul to throw her whole being into fighting for what she believes in. This is a show about diving down to the first act in the life of a person – in this case, a person who sees something and is moved to do something about it. It’s a search for the people in her life who saw her and did something, and how she learned to stand up for herself and for others.

In a larger sense, it’s also about grace—the kind of mercy and compassionate understanding we find ourselves asking for and being asked to give in our lives—and whether that kind of grace, born of experience, can become the foundation for how we relate to each other.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

“Tiffany Cabán @ Rally for Bernie Sanders” from https://www.c-span.org/video/?465364-1/representative-ocasio-cortez-endorses-bernie-sanders-president

"Bernie Williams singles in 11th for 4-3 walk-off win” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iErizZHfs_U

“1010 WINS AM and CNN on Sept. 11” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3dgKUsu-Ls

Audience footage of 2019 Tiffany Cabán campaign election party via @Samynemir on Twitter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1144077394933932033

Illustration

Charlotte Yiu

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”