Mercy Romero ’92 Receives Duke Scholars of Color Award for Recently Published Toward Camden

Mercy Romero ’92 received the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award for her collection of poetic essays, Toward Camden, which was released in December 2021. She characterizes the book as thinking about “landscape, dispossession  and the making of public memory in Camden, New Jersey.” Mercy is an Assistant Professor of American Literature and American Studies at Sonoma State University, where her teaching and research interests include comparative American literatures,  poverty, cultural history, and urban humanities.

The book was cited in the October issue of Publishers Weekly: “Romero combines incisive political commentary, cultural criticism, and memoir in her vibrant debut, a collection of essays about her hometown She considers the city’s long history, from being a stop along the middle passage during the Atlantic slave trade to contemporary waterfront revitalization projects, as well as the effects of displacement, gentrification, urban renewal, and policing in a city beset with poverty, blight, and violence. In ‘Demolition Futures,’ she visits her childhood home and reflects on the changing landscape, wondering what it would ‘mean to dwell at a different meaning of Camden’s unthinkable, its vacant lands.’ In ‘Halfway Houses,’ she visits the Walt Whitman House and considers the life and work of Eleanor Ray, a woman who lived next door and curated it… Elegiac yet hopeful, this meditation is full of power.”

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