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A conversation with community-based experts invites attendees to reflect on James Baldwin's legacy in Mercer County. Featured in the Baldwin Circles project and the Being Human Festival (US).

In 1942, James Baldwin relocated to Central New Jersey to work at the Belle Mead defense plant. It was in New Jersey that he first became conscious of directly experiencing Jim Crow racism. During this special event, led by community-based experts, attendees are invited to reflect on Baldwin’s life and legacy in Mercer County.

This conversation will feature:
Historians Beverly Mills and Elaine Buck, co-founders of the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum, Central New Jersey’s first Black history museum. Together, they will provide historical context of Baldwin’s time in Princeton, Trenton and Belle Meade based on their research and historical memory and help the audience unlearn inaccurate and incomplete historical narratives.

Darren “Freedom” Green, one of Trenton’s most prominent activists and thought leaders, who will facilitate the experience, guiding us between historical context and primary text. The program will open with Green giving a reading of excerpts from “Notes of a Native Son”– in which Baldwin describes the significance of his time in New Jersey.
Musician and producer Wise Intelligent, a member of the Trenton-based hip hop group The Poor Righteous Teachers. He will discuss his lived experience growing up and creating art in Trenton.
This conversation is organized by the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES) at Princeton University and the Princeton Public Library, and is sponsored by the Humanities Council, as part of the yearlong Baldwin Circles project. The event is also featured as part of the Being Human Festival (US).

This program is offered as contribution to the 2025 Being Human Festival (US)'s exploration of landmarks. This collaboration between the Princeton Public Library and Princeton University, "Centennial Landmarks of Literature and Cinema in Princeton" brings into focus Princeton’s legacy as a center of literary and cinematic culture during the last century. Four programs put on by our organizers will explore what it means to reach the landmark of a centennial recognition. Two walking tours explore one hundred years of literature and of cinema in the Princeton area. Two special events unpack how a century of literary celebrity resonates in the present, both in the life and experience of James Baldwin and in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most celebrated title, "The Great Gatsby." These four programs investigate how, at the passing of a century, places and persons can become landmarks, and how we live our lives among them.

In partnership with humanists and humanities organizations across the country, the National Humanities Center is supporting 16 public events across the US. These community-focused events, organized and presented by local artists, scholars, and educators, highlight the incredible breadth of the humanities and demonstrate how they add depth and meaning to our lives, help us understand ourselves and one another, and provide context for the complex world around us. The American edition of the Being Human Festival, begun in 2024, is the latest international expansion of the Being Human effort, launched in the United Kingdom in 2014.

Public Humanities programs and resources at the library are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Representatives from PNC Bank's Nassau Street branch share financial safety tips and more for teens and adults for Financial Literacy Month.

This panel explores how "Latino Poetry: the Library of America Anthology" comprises a groundbreaking anthology celebrating the poetic traditions of Latino America. Hybrid. Registration requested.

The library continues its programming for the "Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home" national public humanities initiative with this panel discussion devoted to the newly published anthology.

Moderated by Vivia Font, the panel includes Rigoberto González, editor of the anthology and principal humanities advisor for the "Places We Call Home" project; Vincent Toro, a poet featured in the anthology and humanities advisor for the "Places We Call Home" project; and Newark-based poet and multidisciplinary artist Dimitri Reyes.

More about the project: ‍For nearly five centuries, the rich tapestry of Latino poetry has been woven from a wealth of languages and cultures. With distinctive rhythms, lyricism, and candor, and nuanced understandings of place, history, and origin, Latino poets have brought dazzling insight to what it means to make a home in America.

Recognition of the beauty and power of this tradition has grown in recent years, with Latino poets receiving two national and twelve state Poet Laureateships, two Pulitzer Prizes, and three National Book Awards. At the same time, the perennial questions confronted by Latino poets—of exile and belonging, language and identity, struggle and solidarity, and labor and landscape—have become ever more urgent.

What does Latino poetry reveal about America? How might it help us imagine a more just, joyful, and capacious future? Places We Call Home seeks to foster nationwide conversation on this vital literature through a groundbreaking new anthology edited by Rigoberto González, events around the country, an online media archive, and a wealth of library resources meant to spur in-depth reflection and discussion on key figures and themes.

Funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emerson Collective, "Places We Call Home" is directed by Library of America and presented in partnership with the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures; the Academy of American Poets; Cave Canem; Poetry Society of America; and the National Book Foundation, among others.

Panelists:
Rigoberto González, editor of "Latino Poetry: the Library of America Anthology" and principal humanities advisor for the "Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home" project, is distinguished professor of English at Rutgers University in Newark, where he is director of the MFA program in Creative Writing.

Vincent Toro, a featured poet in "Latino Poetry: the Library of America Anthology" and humanities advisor for the "Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home Project," is assistant professor of English at Rider University.

Dimitri Reyes is a Boricua multidisciplinary artist, content creator, and educator from Newark, New Jersey. He has been named one of "The Best New Latinx Authors of 2023" by LatinoStories.com for his most recent book, "Papi Pichón" (Get Fresh Books, 2023) which was a finalist for the Omnidawn chapbook contest and the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.

Moderator:
Vivia Font is a performer, collaborator, mother and educator. Most recently, she wrote, produced, and acted in "HONK" (currently in post production; Quarterfinalist, Filmmatic Short Screenplay). She teaches Acting, Voice & Speech, and Performance as vehicle for social, political, and environmental awareness/action, with focuses on Latin America and elsewhere at Princeton University, NYU-Playwright’s Horizons, and Marymount Manhattan College.

This program is presented as part of Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home, a major public humanities initiative taking place across the nation in 2024 and 2025, directed by Library of America and funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emerson Collective.

Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home (Lugares que llamamos hogar) es una gran iniciativa pública en el campo de las humanidades, que se proyecta para el 2024 – 2025. Es dirigida por Library of América con el generoso apoyo del Fondo Nacional para las Humanidades y Emerson Collective.

The author presents her book, "The Migrant's Jail," which Princeton University Press describes as "a century-long history of immigrant incarceration in the United States."

About the book (from the publisher):

Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of hundreds of local jails. But this is nothing new: the federal government has been detaining migrants in city and county jails for more than 100 years. In The Migrant’s Jail, Brianna Nofil examines how a century of political, ideological, and economic exchange between the U.S. immigration bureaucracy and the criminal justice system gave rise to the world’s largest system of migrant incarceration. Migrant detention is not simply an outgrowth of mass incarceration; rather, it has propelled carceral state–building and fostered intergovernmental policing efforts since the turn of the twentieth century.

From the incarceration of Chinese migrants in New York in the 1900s and 1910s to the jailing of Caribbean refugees in Gulf South lockups of the 1980s and 1990s, federal immigration authorities provided communities with a cash windfall that they used to cut taxes, reward local officials, and build bigger jails—which they then had incentive to fill. Trapped in America’s patchwork detention networks, migrants turned to courts, embassies, and the media to challenge the cruel paradox of “administrative imprisonment.” Drawing on immigration records, affidavits, protest letters, and a variety of local sources, Nofil excavates the web of political negotiations, financial deals, and legal precedents that allows the United States to incarcerate migrants with little accountability and devastating consequences.

About the author:



Brianna Nofil is a historian of the modern United States, with a focus on migration, incarceration, and law. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2020 and holds B.A.s in History and Public Policy Studies from Duke University. Brianna’s dissertation received the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians and the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Immigration & Ethnic History Society. Her research has also received the Kathleen Preyer Prize from the American Society for Legal History. Her work has been supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, the Goizueta Foundation at the University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection, and others.

This event was recorded March 6, 2025.

In the annual Marchand Leadership Lecture, Joanne Ramos, author of “The Farm,” will be joined by Samantha Skey, CEO of SHE Media, to discuss the role and possibilities of art in times of polarization.

This program is part of the annual Phyllis Marchand Leadership Lecture series.

About the Speakers:

Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. She graduated with a BA in Political Science from Princeton University. After working in investment banking and private-equity investing for several years, she became a staff writer at The Economist. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children. Ramos is on the board of The Moth, a storytelling/arts group that takes as one of its missions to use stories and the art of stories to increase empathy.

Samantha Skey is Chief Executive Officer of SHE Media, a top 10 lifestyle media company reaching 74M monthly unique visitors. SHE Media, including the flagship brands SheKnows, Flow, StyleCaster, Soaps and BlogHer, was acquired by Penske Media Corporation in March 2018.

From the organizers of the Phyllis Marchand Leadership Lecture at the Princeton Public Library:

The Marchand Lecture, dedicated to “inspiring excellence in community based leadership,” is an annual library event held in honor of Phyllis Marchand, Princeton Township’s longest serving mayor and a leader and leadership mentor in the community for five decades.

Phyllis Marchand, former Princeton Township mayor and Township Committee member, died in the spring of 2021, after serving in Princeton’s local government for 22 years, 14 of them as mayor. In addition to her government service, she had leadership roles in several community non-profits including: the D&R Greenway (she was chair of Board of Trustees at the time of her death); Princeton YWCA; McCarter Theatre; HomeFront; Planned Parenthood; the Coalition for Peace Action; the D&R Canal Commission; Princeton-Pettoranello Sister City Foundation; the New Jersey League of Municipalities; the Mercer Council for Alcohol and Drug Addiction; Corner House; the Jewish Center of Princeton; Cancer Care; the Princeton Garden Theatre; and the Lymphoma Research Foundation.

This event was recorded on March 17, 2025.

Lawrence Ingrassia is joined by Arnold Levine to discuss his memoir "A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery." Book signing to follow.

About the Book (from the publisher):

Weaving his own moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, Lawrence Ingrassia delivers an intimate, gripping tale that sits at the intersection of memoir and medical thriller

Ingrassia lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to cancer—different cancers developing at different points throughout their lives. And while highly unusual, his family is not the only one to wonder whether their heartbreak is the result of unbelievable bad luck, or if there might be another explanation.

Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, Ingrassia takes us from the 1960s—when Dr. Frederick Pei Li and Dr. Joseph Fraumeni Jr. first met, not yet knowing that they would help make a groundbreaking discovery that would affect cancer patients for decades to come—to present day, as Ingrassia and countless others continue to unpack and build upon Li and Fraumeni’s initial discoveries, and to understand what this means for their families.

In the face of seemingly unbearable loss, Ingrassia holds onto hope. He urges us to “fight like Charlie,” his nephew who battled cancer his entire life starting with a rare tumor in his cheek at the age of two—and to look toward the future, as gene sequencing, screening protocols, CRISPR gene editing, and other developing technologies may continue to extend lifespans and perhaps, one day, even offer cures.

About the Author:

Lawrence Ingrassia is an award-winning journalist, now retired, having worked as a senior editor at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. His latest book, "A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery," is one of 10 books on the longlist for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award for 2024 nonfiction, and was selected for a number of best-of-the-year lists: NPR's Books We Love of 2024; Amazon's Best Nonfiction Books of 2024; Kirkus Review's Best Nonfiction; and BookPage Best Audiobooks of 2024.


About the Moderator:

Arnold Levine, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., is a renowned scientist who has won numerous awards for his groundbreaking research, including work on cancer genetics that helped deepen the understanding of hereditary syndromes.

This event was recorded on March 12, 2025.