“I’ve never ever ever shied away from the fact that I’m from Portland. I have a love and hate relationship with it. Growing up as a Black kid in that city, it wasn’t great. […] I wanted to shine a light on very historical Black places and people.”
Portland rapper Aminé in an interview with Portland Monthly
A number of recent Black-authored novels and memoirs have set coming-of age stories in Portland, Oregon. How do these stories help us learn about Portland’s history of displacing Black people, communities, and businesses?
In this project, we begin to answer that question by placing bits of these narratives into Portland spaces. We map the stories’ locations and spotlight their insights about the meanings of home, community, memory, and place.
We invite you to step into these stories to learn, see, and contemplate a history not well known to many Portlanders.
How do spaces and stories help us understand displacement?
Created by Arvie Smith (credit: Mark McClure, Flickr)