How the Earth Answers: Poems about Bronx Slavery

David Mills will read from a new, yet-to-be-published poetry collection, How the Earth Answers, focused on slavery in the Bronx.The reading will be held on the third floor (accessible via stairs only) of the Van Cortlandt House Museum, adjacent to an area identified as the quarters inhabited by the enslaved people who toiled and lived on the plantation.

The Enslaved People Project
This reading is part of a series of Van Cortlandt Park Alliance’s ongoing programs and continued efforts to educate the community about the Enslaved People of the Van Cortlandt Plantation.

The Story Behind How the Earth Answers
Most folks who live in the Bronx—and maybe in all five boroughs—have heard of Van Cortlandt Park, Hunts Point, Pelham Parkway, and Morrisania. But how many know that slavery took place in each of these neighborhoods, all in the name of families like Van Cortlandt, Hunt, Pell, Morris, and Berrian? The Morrises and Van Cortlandts owned large plantations worked by people they had enslaved. In fact, New York’s plantations were part of the larger, hideous slavery ecosystem, providing provisions for sugar, cotton, and tobacco operations in the southern states and Caribbean.

All combined, Manhattan, the Bronx, and modern-day Westchester served as the “breadbasket” for the American colonies throughout the 1700s. For a long time, David Mills wondered if there had been slavery in the Bronx, the borough of his youth. With grant funding, he conducted considerable research and wrote a number of poems about slavery in the Bronx during this last year. Now he no longer wonders.

Still, he questions how he grew up in the Bronx and never heard about its slaving past. He played sandlot football in Van Cortlandt Park and baseball for the Pelham Park Sox as a teenager, frequently visited an aunt in Morrisania, and dated a woman from Hunts Point. Yet he only discovered, in his late 30s, that the borough that shaped him played such a significant role in our country’s slaving past.

Through his evocative writing and passionate reading, David Mills will share his Bronx slavery poems with you. Thoughtful conversation follows the reading.

About David Mills
David Mills holds an M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College and an M.A. from New York University in creative writing. He has published four poetry collections: Boneyarn (Manhattan slavery poems); After Mistic (Massachusetts slavery poems); The Sudden Country; and The Dream Detective. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Fence, Crab Orchard Review, Jubilat, Callaloo, Brooklyn Rail, and Obsidian.

Space is limited so advance registration is required.

This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Host or Publisher Van Cortlandt Park Alliance