Description

Is Gentrification the Supervillain of Our Time?

As a black woman and a comics geek, Stacie Williams identified strongly with one aspect of The Fortress of Solitude—its portrayal of gentrification. For Jonathan Lethem’s characters, and for Williams in her own life, gentrification is a stand-in for racism—the “Big Bad” that affects education, policing, and housing policy. Tracing her experience of living in Chicago, Boston, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Lexington, Kentucky, Williams tests the limits of how far Lethem’s superhero narrative frames the most American of experiences.

Stacie Williams is the director of the Center for Digital Scholarship at the University of Chicago and an advisory archivist for A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland. Her work has appeared in Bitch, LitHub, New York magazine, Catapult, Gordon Square Review and The Rumpus. The South Side of Chicago is home.

“I want to read this.” — Jonathan Lethem

“Made me think more deeply about where I live and why.” — Laura Maylene Walter

Interview at Kenyon Review

About the Series