Spring out of Winter: Nature notes from Rhode Island - Motif

Spring out of Winter: Nature notes from Rhode
Island

Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown; photo credit: Sean Carlson

The bitterness brought an upside, greeted the attendant at the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown:
Fewer people on the trails meant more peace for the birds. But, besides an errant rustle underfoot or
chirp overhead, the birds seemed to have sought other sanctuaries. As the temperature eked up to 24
degrees, I wandered in solitude.

Relatively new to Rhode Island, I’ve found a winter of weekend walks has teased the vastness within the
smallest state. At Sachuest Point, within sight of the Norman Bird Sanctuary, my daughters tottered in
snowsuits to watch waves break against the stone shore. At John H. Chafee Nature Preserve, white-
tailed deer blocked a powdered path toward the arc of Rome Point at sunset. Submerged tree trunks

and marsh grasses at Trustom Pond and Ninigret National Wildlife Refuges reinforced the risks and
reality of rising seas, even if tinged with ice.

As I kept balance on slick patches of packed snow one recent morning in North Kingstown’s Ryan Park,
the day warmed past freezing and birdsong peppered the hum of Route 4. No hint of buds on the
branches yet, but the air felt lighter. Along the trails, chickadees warned that I had broken their peace.

Life Mission: Looking into a distant moon
ocean

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

More than 340 million miles beyond Mars, an icy moon awaits its first close-up. Days before NASA’s
Perseverance rover reached the surface of the Red Planet, the US space program announced updates to
another long-awaited mission with the potential to find signs of life. In October 2024, the Europa
Clipper will leave Earth on a private rocket, destined to begin orbiting Jupiter nearly six years later to
study Europa, the smallest of the yellow planet’s largest moons.

“Unlike what one day might be discovered on Mars,” writes David W. Brown in The Mission, a swirling
exploration of the history, science, money and policy maneuverings behind the two-decade journey
behind the mission to Europa, “Europan life has a real chance of complexity.”

In 1610, German astronomer Simon Marius and his Italian adversary Galileo Galilei each sighted four
satellites orbiting Jupiter using homemade telescopes. Galilei published his findings first. Despite
centuries of improvements to telescopic technology, the Galilean moons of Jupiter — including Callisto,
Ganymede, and Io — remained a mystery until NASA’s Pioneer and Voyager missions in the 1970s
beamed glimpses of their surfaces back to Earth. A distant speck amidst the celestial spheres, many of
the revolutions of Europa began in Providence.

“We’re mentally hardwired to think in the short term,” said Jim Head, a distinguished professor of
planetary geosciences at Brown University. “We have to cultivate and work toward trying to think more
in the long term.”

The Galilean moons, or satellites, of Jupiter; from left to right: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto;
Image credit: NASA/JPL/DLR

In 1961, having failed out of his sophomore year at Washington and Lee University in Lexington,
Virginia, Head listened to breakthroughs in the space race at home in Washington, DC, on what he calls
“my first sabbatical.” Within six weeks, Soviet Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, Alan
Shepard followed as the first American, and President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress to propose

not only landing on the Moon, but also “even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space…
perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself.”

After gaining readmittance to Washington and Lee, Head continued his major in geology. He had
enrolled in an introductory course to fulfill a science requirement. Unlike chemistry and physics, the
labs took place outdoors and involved field trips. Head fell for the study of the Earth’s surface and
carried his curiosity to graduate studies at Brown, writing his dissertation on the 400 million year old
history held in the sedimentary rocks of the Appalachian Mountains.

As Head completed his PhD in 1969, he thumbed through an employment directory. Most of the listings
for geologists involved teaching at small colleges or working for the oil industry, but in a separate
section, Head found an unexpected advertisement. With the Apollo 11 mission months away, a
photograph of the Moon was accompanied by the text “our job is to think our way to the Moon and
back.” Although lacking lunar expertise, Head called the phone number printed in the corner. The
experiences that followed, he said, “opened up the heavens.”

“When I went to NASA, I was deathly afraid they would find out I didn’t know anything about the Moon
or the planets,” said Head. “And I quickly learned, of course, nobody knew anything about the planets.
That’s why we were going.”

Working on the Apollo program, Head helped select lunar landing sites, trained astronauts in geology
and surface exploration, and analyzed the samples they brought back from the Moon. In 1972, he
returned to Providence as a member of the faculty at Brown, though shuttled back and forth to Houston
for a year as interim director of the Lunar Science Institute. At home, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the
Moon orbited around the needle of Head’s record player.

Lunar Module (left) and Lunar Roving Vehicle (right) during the Apollo 15 mission to the Moon; Image
credit: Johnson Space Center

Researching the geological processes found across the planets and the historical record they left
behind, Head studied Arctic and Antarctic glaciers and volcanic deposits in Hawai’i, in Iceland and
along the sea floor. To improve scientific collaboration between the United States and the USSR, he
established a research partnership between Brown and the Vernadsky Institute in Moscow. He advised
missions to Mars, Venus and Jupiter and also worked as part of the mission teams, but said he viewed
teaching undergraduates and supporting graduate research as central to his role. One of those
graduate students was Louise Prockter.

Growing up in London, Prockter learned at the Natural History Museum that rocks “told stories about
the world they left behind,” writes Brown. After high school, she decided not to pursue university
studies. Instead, she spent several years in a series of sales roles, starting with local newspaper
advertisements before finding work selling typewriters and later PVC ring binders.

“I got to think creatively at that time,” said Prockter, now chief scientist of the space exploration sector
at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “I learned a lot of things that, while having
nothing to do with science, were very useful. I learned to work under pressure. I learned to work with
deadlines. And that’s very useful in the space business.”

After enrolling in a part-time correspondence program on general sciences, Prockter continued her
education. Attending Lancaster University as a “mature” undergraduate student, in one of her classes
she read a Journal of Geophysical Research paper about crater formation on Venus. Written by Peter
Schultz, a professor at Brown, the publication — a “meticulous work conducted over a number of years
to solve a small oddity on another world,” writes Brown — set an example she wished to follow. As
Prockter considered US graduate programs, in July 1994 she flew from England to meet with Jim Head.
Her arrival in Providence coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. That
week, she found a pizza party set up alongside telescopes on campus to witness a comet shattering into
Jupiter.

In her own research at Brown, Prockter studied geomorphology, interpreting planetary surfaces and
their relationships with geology. She focused on volcanic activity in the Earth’s ocean and on Venus,
writing her dissertation on features in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. When in 1995 Prockter witnessed images
from NASA’s Galileo space probe, she understood the transferability of her research across the planets.
She led the imaging plans for two of the mission’s Europa flybys.

“The payoff is unbelievable,” said Prockter. “When you get images from spacecraft that no one’s ever
seen before.”

“It’s just almost a universal language, of space,” she said. “Everybody dreams, and everybody aspires to
learn more about the universe and why we’re here.”

Head and Prockter were joined in their work by Geoff Collins, now a professor at Wheaton College, and
Robert Pappalardo, a postdoc arriving from Arizona State University. He had looked to space for as long
as he could remember, writes Brown. Crafting a model of the solar system above his bed as a child,
Pappalardo replicated the icy moons of Jupiter with “crushed masking tape” held in place by toothpicks.
He found geology to be his pathway to the planets.

“I view the solar system as a laboratory for trying to understand how life originated and evolved,” said
Head.

“If you want to see what it would be like, with climate change and global warming run amok, you go to
Venus,” said Prockter. “If you want to see what it’s like on a world where there used to be water but
now there isn’t, you go to Mars.”

For Pappalardo, Europa held particular intrigue. At Brown, he analyzed the data from Galileo and
planned the mission’s campaigns to capture images of Jupiter’s icy moons, including high-resolution
images of Europa. The data led Prockter, Pappalardo and their colleagues to speculate about the
existence, and the implications, of water captured under its frozen surface.

“Brown’s importance to the Europa story is more than happenstance,” said Brown, the writer, about the
university. “The inner workings of the ice shell surrounding the ocean were unlocked there, and
scientists at Brown chipped away at the nature of the mysterious moon’s bizarre geology.”

After six years as a postdoc at Brown, Pappalardo became an assistant professor at University of
Colorado, Boulder. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory plucked him from academia to become a senior
research scientist at its headquarters in Pasadena, California, where he led the science behind the
possibility, and then the eventuality, of exploring Europa. After Brown, Prockter moved to the Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, continuing her collaborations with
Pappalardo as a scientist shaping the planning for the team’s missions.

Ice rafting on Europa, referring to the transport of sediment that became embedded in the icy surface

of the Jovian moon; Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Brown University’s influence on planetary sciences dates back before the Revolutionary War. Then
known as Rhode Island College, in 1769 Brown’s professors Benjamin West and Joseph Brown published
their observations on the transit of Venus, leaving their legacy behind on the naming of Transit and
Planet Streets near campus. Ladd Observatory opened for researchers in 1891 and began to welcome
the public in 1930. Faculty members guided the science behind the Viking 1’s mission to Mars,
confirmed the existence of water on the surface of the Earth’s moon, and uncovered further evidence of
water within its interior. Research from Brown graduate students and faculty, including Head, informed
the decision for the Perseverance rover and its Ingenuity helicopter to explore the Jezero crater on
NASA’s current mission to Mars.

In The Mission, Brown writes that Jim Head was a “force among the chosen few in the field” whose
contributions to the Apollo program were “part of the most arresting and audacious achievement of the
twentieth century, if not all of human history.” By approaching his doctorate as “a degree in advanced
problem solving,” Head said he sees no surprise in his career path being “nonlinear.” For the
researchers whose orbits fell into alignment together under Head’s helm, including Prockter and
Pappalardo, when the Europa Clipper reaches its destination in April 2030, its findings will be the result
of the questions and hypotheses raised in Providence.

“Science is really simple,” said Head. “It’s just simply the exploration of the unknown. And you know,
almost everything is not yet known.”

###

David W. Brown’s The Mission: How a Disciple of Carl Sagan, an Ex-Motocross Racer, a Texas Tea Party
Congressman, the World’s Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an
Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows
with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Rocket to Jupiter in
Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called
Europa is published by Custom House Books.

After the pandemic, reward your inner astronomer at Rhode Island’s observatories: Ladd Observatory at
Brown University in Providence; Skyscrapers, Inc.’s Seagrave Memorial Observatory in North Scituate;
the Community College of Rhode Island’s Margaret M. Jacoby Observatory; and the Frosty Drew
Observatory in Charlestown. The University of Rhode Island’s planetarium also hosts a public program.

Writing Toward a Better World: 2021 PEN
America Literary Award finalists with local ties

Ninety-nine years ago, Thomas Hardy sent a message to a dinner gathering of writers in London: “The
exchange of International Thought is the only possible salvation of the world.” The collection of poets,
essayists and editors, and novelists contributed their literary skills to the group’s acronym: P.E.N. Club,
which celebrated the opening of organizations in the United States and across Europe. Nearly a century
later, 100 PEN centers around the world today ladder up to PEN International, an association bridging
literature and human rights while advocating for the principles of a free press and freedom of
expression.

Since the inaugural PEN Translation Prize in 1963 celebrated Archibald Colquhoun for his translation of
The Viceroys from Federico de Roberto’s Italian original, PEN America has expanded and evolved its
annual awards to recognize new works of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. In an email announcing
the 2021 shortlist, program director Jane Merchant called the 55 titles “the highest examples of literary
excellence, during a time when writing is urgently needed to support empathy and a better world.”

Several of the finalists were influenced by time in Rhode Island and the South Coast of Massachusetts:

Lizzie Davis

Ornamental by Juan Cárdenas

Translated from Spanish into English

Published by Coffee House Press

Finalist for the PEN Translation Prize, recognizing “book-length prose translations from any language
into English.”

In her “Writers on Writing” course in the Literary Arts department at Brown University, Lizzie Davis
encountered unfamiliar works from independent publishers that pushed boundaries in terms of form
and content. The syllabus included Rikki Ducornet’s Netsuke, the first novel she read from Coffee
House Press.

“I thought, if I ever work in publishing, I want it to be for a press that publishes books like these,” Davis
said. “So much of what I’m doing now seems to be the direct result of my time spent in Providence and
the generosity and support of the people I encountered there.”

Now editor of Coffee House Press, based in Minneapolis, Davis credits a Brown workshop led by Forrest
Gander for enabling her as an undergraduate to translate a single work of literature over the course of
one semester. From a stack of books, she selected a collection of prose poems by Spanish writer Pilar
Fraile Amador. The following year, when Amador visited Providence for a bilingual reading series,
Gander invited Davis to participate.

“That book exerted some kind of gravitational pull on me,” said Davis. “I was hooked.”

After translating most of Amador’s poetry, co-translating Valeria Luiselli’s American Book Award-
winning Tell Me How It Ends, and bringing a selection of poems, letters and various excerpts from
Spanish and Italian into English, Davis met novelist Juan Cárdenas at the Medellín Book and Culture
Festival. She arrived in Colombia after a hurricane cancelled a connecting flight and left her stranded
for 24 hours in San Salvador, El Salvador. Since Davis was staying at the same Medellín hotel as
Cárdenas, the organizers of the book fair encouraged her to get to know him and rely on him as a local
guide.

“I didn’t know then that he was a writer and translator, but he mentioned that Coffee House published
all his friends,” said Davis. “I found one of his books at the fair, started reading it, and immediately
knew that I wanted us to publish it, and that I wanted to throw my hat into the ring as a possible
translator.”

Peniel E. Joseph

The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Published by Basic Books

Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, recognizing “excellence in the art of
biography.”

Now a professor of public affairs at The University of Texas at Austin and founding director of the
Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Dr. Peniel E.
Joseph lived in Rhode Island between 1999 and 2005.

Besides a one-year fellowship with the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, during this period, Joseph
served as an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island and spent two summers on
fellowships at Brown to research and write his first book, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative
History of Black Power in America (Henry Holt, 2007).

The history department and Africana Studies program at URI were “filled with world class scholars,

who encouraged me as a young scholar,” said Joseph. He wrote at cafes near Brown and learned about
the history of Black student activism on both campuses. He said these experiences galvanized his
studies of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and his interest in the relationship between race
and democracy.

“In short, I owe such an enormous intellectual and personal debt to the many friends and colleagues
and students and administrators and community folk who supported me during my years in Rhode
Island,” said Joseph. “I loved every minute of my time there.”

Emily Levesque

The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers

Published by Sourcebooks

Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, recognizing “writing that exemplifies
literary excellence on the subject of the physical or biological sciences and communicates complex
scientific concepts to a lay audience.”

As a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle, Dr. Emily Levesque researches
and explains how massive stars evolve and die. Born and raised in Taunton, her earliest memories of
stargazing took place in the backyard of her childhood home. In The Last Stargazers, she writes of first
meeting an astronomer during an astronomy night hosted nearby at Wheaton College.

“My writing and astronomy career were both heavily shaped by the arts and science opportunities that
my parents and teachers were able to make possible in the area,” Levesque said.

She participated in local, regional and state science fairs while growing up. At Taunton High School,
Levesque joined the math team and participated in band and theater.

“As a university professor, now I’m starting to get a small understanding of how immensely hard some
of our teachers in the Taunton school system worked and fought to make these opportunities available,”
she said.

Levesque considered Kenneth Perry, her eighth grade science at Martin Middle School in East Taunton,
a “big driving force.” She also studied music under Ann Danis, now a professor of music and director of
orchestral activities at URI, and played violin in Rhode Island youth orchestras.

“Science and the arts have always been very closely connected for me,” she said. “I think learning how
to enjoy hard work, how to find and tell a good story and how to pass your enthusiasm on to an
audience are all crucial components of both.”

Emma Ramadan

A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa

Translated from French into English

Published by Seven Stories Press

Finalist for the PEN Translation Prize, recognizing “book-length prose translations from any language
into English.”

After Emma Ramadan earned her B.A. in comparative literature and literary translation at Brown, she
pursued a master’s degree in Paris, a Fulbright in Morocco and a stint in New York City before
returning to Providence in 2016 to co-found Riffraff bookstore and bar with her husband Tom Roberge.
(Read Motif’s December 2019 feature on Riffraff and Q&A with Ramadan and Roberge.)

Ramadan credited Cole Swensen and Forrest Gander at Brown who “made it feel like the community of
writers in Providence was something very special and that people like that were being drawn here.”

As well as bringing Moroccan writer and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa’s novel A Country for Dying to
readers of English, Ramadan has translated more than a dozen novels and poetry collections from
French.

Her translations of Zabor, or the Psalms by Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud will publish in March with

Other Press and In Concrete by French novelist Anne F. Garréta will publish in April with Deep Vellum.

Asako Serizawa

Inheritors

Published by Doubleday

Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, recognizing “book-length writings by authors of color.”

While pursuing graduate studies in American and English literature at Brown in the late 1990s, Asako
Serizawa hadn’t considered the possibility of writing fiction. Interested in modernist and postcolonial
literature, she considered classes taught by Neil Lazarus and Mary Ann Doana to be “foundational” to
her creative work.

“Brown was absolutely crucial,” Serizawa said. “It gave me a critical frame, a way to think about not
just my material, the context and content, but my aesthetic choices, as well.”

Living in an attic apartment along Benefit Street in Providence, Serizawa often braved the wintertime
risks of the “craggy back steps” for coffee and popovers downstairs at the now shuttered Cable Car
cinema and cafe.

“It would’ve been the perfect place to revise manuscripts,” she said, “if I’d been working on my book
then.”

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

The Freezer Door

Published by Semiotext(e)

Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, recognizing “a book-length work of any genre for its
originality, merit and impact.”

Although spending much of her time at Brown in 1991 involved with campus activism, protesting
against the university over issues of class and race in admissions, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
discovered the avant-garde form of “language poetry” in workshops with Lee Ann Brown and C.D.
Wright.

“What language poetry taught me was to condense all of my experiences into just a few spare words on
a page,” said Sycamore. “Through that, I really learned how to edit.”

Sycamore withdrew from Brown and moved to San Francisco, but returned to Brown in 1994 for what
would have been her senior year before withdrawing one semester later. During this time, she explored
the city’s gay bars, club culture, and arts venues and events. At ’Stravaganza, AS220’s annual queer
entertainment showcase, she read her first short story based on making a living in San Francisco as a
sex worker.

“One thing I learned over the years is to write toward feeling,” said Sycamore. “I think that what I was
actually learning at Brown was more about clinical detachment in writing.”

She has now edited five nonfiction collections, three novels and two memoirs, including The Freezer
Door.

“As a queer kid growing up in a world that I knew wanted me to die or disappear and growing up in a
family that magnified that violence rather than protecting or nourishing me, leaving Brown and moving
to San Francisco was the best choice I ever made,” said Sycamore. “It allowed me to find other kids like
me and to find other queers and outsiders who were intent on building our own world, building our own
value system, building our own ways of living with, and lusting for, and taking care of one another.”

C Pam Zhang

How Much of These Hills Is Gold

(Riverhead Books, 2020)

Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, recognizing “a debut novel of exceptional
merit by an American author who has not previously published a full-length book of fiction.”

Earning her bachelor’s degree in English from Brown, C Pam Zhang specialized in Creative Nonfiction.
Her senior thesis received the David Rome Prize for the best lyric essay by a Brown undergraduate, and
an excerpt of the lyric poem, written in eight parts, was featured in Prospect, an annual Brown
anthology.

“Half of what I know about writing fiction derives from nonfiction forms I encountered and tried for the
first time in classes with Catherine Imbriglio and Carol DeBoer-Langworthy,” said Zhang.

“I was fueled by far too many 5am potatoes and buttered muffins at Louis on Brook Street.”

The longlist for the 2021 PEN Literary Awards also included a few other authors with local connections:

     Rachel Tzvia Back, longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her Hebrew-to-
     English translation of Now at the Threshold: The Late Poems of Tuvia Ruebner, led Brown’s joint
     study-abroad program for Israeli and Palestinian studies in Jerusalem.
     Jotham Burrello, longlisted for the the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel for Spindle City,
     was born in Fall River and weaves the city’s history throughout his novel.
     Asako Serizawa’s Inheritors was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut
     Short Story Collection as well as being shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award.
     David Wallace-Wells, longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction for
     The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, earned a BA from Brown.

“A Thrilling Tale”: The magic and medicine of
Rudolph Fisher

(2021 editions of Rudolph Fisher’s novels; image credits: HarperCollins Publishers)

When, in 1932, Rudolph Fisher’s The Conjure-Man Dies was published, the journal Opportunity called
the mystery “startling in its cleverness,” predicting the protagonist, a Harlem doctor with a detective’s
eye, would reappear. That year, Agathie Christie spun her investigative hero, Hercule Poirot, into a
seventh book and William Faulkner’s Light in August reflected the weight borne by a country whose
stories were rife with racial classifications. Reissued this month by HarperCollins, Fisher’s work trod
themes familiar to his contemporaries while breaking ground not only as the first known crime novel by
a Black author, but also as the first to feature exclusively Black characters as they contend with a
resurrected murder victim who promises, “He who knows completely the past and the present can
deduce the inevitable future.”

An early witness to the migrations and voices that would later breathe life into his fiction, as a toddler
Fisher shared a Manhattan apartment with his mother and father, a brother almost 20 years older who
had served with the 25th Infantry Regiment, a Black unit given the military’s segregation, a teenage
sister still in school, the ghosts of three siblings dead, and a waiter, houseworker, and bellhop from
below the Mason-Dixon line paying rent as boarders. Within the tenement, Fisher’s neighbors were a

mix of native New Yorkers and newcomers from the West Indies. Afro-Cuban essayist and editor Rafael
Serra lived in the building next door. On the other side stood a lodging house of European immigrants,
most of whom had arrived from Germany.

The New York Times described the stretch near West 33rd Street and 7th Avenue, one block from
Broadway, as a “little principality” and “the despised ‘patch.’” Before his family arrived, a woman
burned her roommate to death in an adjacent building, and a paperboy lost his leg when struck by an
electric streetcar. Across the street, police raided the home of women dubbed the Three Musketeers for
reportedly stage-managing thefts from “innocent wanderers” when rations were light. On the corner, a
hotel offered a breakfast menu of English mutton chop, broiled quail on toast, and a side of Russian
caviar, with Moët & Chandon Brut Imperial available by quart or by pint. After the funeral of a police
officer, a white mob ransacked Black businesses, striking residents with clubs and clamoring for
lynchings in the streets. Two avenues westward, the Thirty-Third Street Baptist Church preached
salvation, and a local pastor wrote to the mayor for help on Earth: “The color of a man’s skin must not
be made the index of his character or ability.”

With construction planned for Pennsylvania Station and railroad lines connecting New York with the
South, tenement owners began to sell their properties, and many residents found themselves moving up
to Lincoln Square and Harlem. Fisher’s father, a pastor, received an assignment farther north: in Rhode
Island. When the Fishers arrived in Providence, electric streetcars shuttled along Broad Street, running
between downtown and the city’s south side. In the shadows of the Union Railroad storage station, in
September 1906 Rev. Fisher purchased a vacant lot for $10 (today: $2,900). On the site, he established
the Macedonian Baptist Church.

As Rhode Island’s manufacturing economy surged, more than 100,000 new residents within a decade
pushed the population above half a million for the first time. The state’s Black population increased by
437 to surpass 9,500 — fewer than the New York City neighborhood of Fisher’s early childhood. Of the
dozen other houses on their Providence street, all but the next-door neighbors were white, mostly
immigrants and children of immigrants from Canada, England, Ireland and Germany working as
servants, bakers, box cutters and machinists. While Fisher’s father built the church, his mother worked
as a dressmaker at home. By 1910, church records noted Fisher’s father’s efforts were “proving a
vigorous offspring,” with a congregation of 60 members.

(Lexington Avenue Grammar School; photo credit: Providence Public Library)

In the mornings, Fisher walked less than five minutes to a red-brick schoolhouse beside a gold and
silversmith factory. As a student, he earned recognition for his writing, oration and music. At 11, to
mark Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, Fisher recited in the main hall an ode to “a great soul passed from
earth.” Three months later, he conjured the “tumult in the city” during 1776, rattling off verse about the
Independence Bell ringing out for “glorious liberty.” With his school’s Glee Club, Fisher performed the
works of Franz Schubert and delivered a solo recitative.

When Fisher entered Classical High School, the college preparatory program fell under the leadership
of principal William T. Peck, a devout Baptist who had served as a delegate at a Rhode Island Baptist
State Convention at the same time as Fisher’s father. At first, he avoided extracurriculars, but he
returned to glee as a sophomore and added debate during his junior year. As a senior, Fisher served as
treasurer of the former, president of the latter, associate editor of the yearbook and class poet. Of the
languages taught at Classical, he opted for German over Greek, and expressed an intent to pursue
medicine, hoping to study surgery.

(1915 Classical High School yearbook committee, including associate editor Rudolph Fisher (bottom
left); photo credit: Classical High School)

Throughout high school, Fisher showed confidence on stage. At 16, he joined Rhode Island’s lieutenant
governor to speak about Lincoln. At 17, he recited James Whitcomb Riley’s poetry at a school ceremony
and led the debate team to win the state championships. At 18, he riled up his class dinner, delivering a
speech The Providence Journal described as “replete with witty sallies, and enthusiastically applauded.”
Other students dubbed him a “silver-tongued orator” and “the genius of the class — at least in
extemporaneous brilliance.”

“The way apparently unpronounceable words flow from Fisher’s fluent tongue is indeed a revelation,”
read his senior yearbook, “and it has certainly caused us unlimited worry to learn how he manages to
swallow so much of the dictionary during the lunch period.”

Fisher’s principal urged the graduating class “to decide where to go in life and then get there.” Jim
Crow laws limited how much Fisher could follow the same advice as his classmates.

(Rudolph Fisher, Classical High School, Class of 1915; photo credit: Classical High School)

Fisher entered Brown University as one of two Black students in his class. Pursuing a dual major in
English and biology, he received the Caesar Misch Prize for German, placed first in the Thomas
Carpenter Prizes for Elocution, and earned university scholarships for “exceptional scholastic ability”
and being “the student with the highest standing in rhetoric, English composition, and public speaking.”

At a time when 1,800 Black residents of Providence marched in solidarity with silent parades held
across the United States to protest lynchings and other killings on the basis of race, Fisher opened a
civil forum on current issues with a musical program and hosted an afternoon lyceum to welcome public
discussion.

After the United States entered the First World War, Fisher registered for the draft. Of the descriptions
listed on his registration card — “White, Negro, Indian, and Oriental” — he crossed out three. Donning

a khaki uniform and Montana peak hat, he drilled on campus with the Student Army Training Corps.

Weeks into Fisher’s senior year, the outbreak of the 1918 influenza pandemic led to Brown announcing
a quarantine order and placing armed guards at the campus gates. Even as the war came to an end in
armistice, commencement exercises the following summer bore a somberness given the dead and
wounded overseas as well as the pandemic’s harm at home. A brass band led Fisher in the procession of
graduating students down the hill from campus, as an honor flag displayed 42 gold stars, one for each
of Brown’s former students and faculty lost in the war — more than half of whom had died from illness
rather than in active battle.

Fisher served as orator during Brown’s commencement program and was selected as one of two class
speakers. Noting his plans to pursue a medical degree, the Brown yearbook issued its own prescription:
“Between soothing syrup and that glib tongue of yours, you ought to be a sure cure for anything.”

(Rudolph Fisher, Brown University, A.B. 1919, A.M. 1920; photo credit: Brown University)

Less than six weeks after commencement, Fisher’s father died at home. His kidneys failed after a year
of nephritis, a condition more likely following exposure to the 1918 influenza strain. Widowed, Fisher’s
mother moved back to New York, finding work at the Colored Orphan Asylum in the Bronx. As a
“Cottage Mother,” she helped with the care and education of nearly 300 parentless children classified
as “inmates” in the 1920 US census. Fisher returned to Brown in the fall to complete a master’s degree,
then enrolled in medical school at Howard University in Washington, DC.

Commuting to Howard from Baltimore, where his sister taught at the Colored Teachers Training School

(today: Coppin State University), Fisher studied radiology; taught courses in embryology; led lab studies
on chicken, pi, and human embryos; and played fullback on an intramural football team. Under the
banner of Howard’s motto, “Humanity First,” Fisher earned his Doctorate of Medicine as one of 27
graduates in 1924 and accepted an internship at the affiliated Freedmen’s Hospital, founded decades
earlier as a Union Army barracks that provided medical care to those who had escaped enslavement or
had been displaced by the Civil War.

Although Fisher told his Howard peers he planned to practice medicine in Egypt, he remained in
Washington, DC, married his girlfriend, Jane Elsie Ryder, and began to submit short stories he had
written around his medical work. In February 1925, The Atlantic Monthly carried Fisher’s first piece of
fiction. The issue also featured “an original unpublished ballad” by Abraham Lincoln and an essay on
the former president by an assistant secretary in his administration. Fisher’s “City of Refuge” captured
the awe of King Solomon Gillis, a neophyte in New York who had “probably escaped a lynching” in
North Carolina after he stepped off a subway in Harlem feeling “as if he had been caught up in the jaws
of a steam-shovel, jammed together with other helpless lumps of dirt, swept blindly along for a time,
and at last abruptly dumped.”

(Rudolph Fisher’s first published short story, “City of Refuge,” appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in
February 1925, an edition that also featured an unpublished ballad by Abraham Lincoln; photo credit:
HathiTrust Digital Library)

As other stories of Fisher’s began to appear, Alain Locke anthologized an excerpt from “The South
Lingers On” in his definitive collection of the era’s Harlem literature. The Atlantic hailed the author’s

“profound understanding of his race.” And The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, selected
Fisher as the recipient of its $100 Amy Spingarn prize (today: $1,500), judged by Charles W. Chestnutt,
Sinclair Lewis, Mary White Ovington and H.G. Wells.

A National Research Council fellowship at Columbia University in 1925 gave Fisher reason to return to
New York. The residence of his childhood had long since been demolished during the construction of
Penn Station and rebuilt into Gimbels, a 12-story department store. With his wife, Fisher made a home
in Harlem. While studying bacteriology and pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he
also found friendship among other writers, musicians and artists. In May 1926, Carl Van Vechten
welcomed Fisher with his wife and sister after dinner to meet publishers Blanche and Alfred Knopf.

When Fisher’s debut novel, The Walls of Jericho, fell into the hands of readers in 1928, Knopf trumpeted
its latest voice from Harlem as a work in line with Nella Larsen, James Weldon Johnson and Langston
Hughes. Bearing the title of a short story in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1903 collection, Old Plantation
Days, and with reference to the biblical Book of Joshua, Fisher’s satire descended upon the nuance of
race, class, labor and wealth. In an interview with Vincent McHugh for The Providence Journal, Fisher
said he drafted The Walls of Jericho “in great haste.”

“Its impromptu form suggested that it had been done with the left hand but I had never before seen the
evidence of a left hand so skilful,” noted McHugh. “I should like to see what Dr. Fisher’s right hand can
do.”

(Rudolph Fisher, undated photo; photo credit: Brown University)

During the preceding years, Fisher had managed a second fellowship from the National Research
Council, practicing medicine at Mt. Sinai and Montefiore Hospitals. He conducted research into
ultraviolet rays, co-writing papers with his findings for the Proceedings of the Society of Experimental
Biology and Medicine and the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Fisher continued to contribute to The
Atlantic and had fiction in the pages of McClure’s and reportage on white New Yorkers’ intrigue of
Harlem in American Mercury. Amidst it all, he and his wife welcomed their only child, Hugh.

The end of the 1920s started for Fisher with the death of his mother. As the Great Crash ushered in the
Great Depression, the private hospital where Fisher worked fell into financial trouble and changed
hands. He continued in the role of superintendent under the new ownership of the facility, which too fell
into bankruptcy. He paid $90 monthly (today: $1,350) to live in Harlem’s Dunbar Apartments, the first
large-scale cooperative housing complex in New York built with a purpose of welcoming Black
residents. Fisher’s brother, a postal clerk, and sister, a public school teacher, lived with him, his wife,
and their son. They listened to radio broadcasts together, and Fisher wrote by typewriter for four hours
in the mornings before work.

Fisher enlisted in the US Army as a member of the reserve medical corps with the 369th Infantry. And
as an employee with the New York City Department of Health, he opened his own radiology practice at
a family residence in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens. The City Record, the official journal of New
York City, misclassified Fisher as a veterinarian.

When Fisher’s second novel, The Conjure-Man Dies, was published in 1932, The New York Times called
the follow-up to The Walls of Jericho “a puzzling mystery yarn which is at the same time a lively picture
of Harlem.” The Crisis found it to be “a thrilling tale which is bound to be hailed the most unusual
mystery of the year.” Opportunity, the journal of the National Urban League, argued that “firsts” like
Fisher’s were “all very well indeed” and “should be noted” but instead of the work being “a good
detective story” defined by the author’s race, it was all the more appropriate to conclude without
qualifier, “it is a good detective story.” The reviewer predicted the protagonist, a Harlem doctor with a
detective’s eye, would live on.

(The Conjure-Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher, Covici-Friede, 1932; photo credit: New York Public Library)

As Fisher conducted radio interviews, drafted an adaptation of the novel for the stage, published
additional short stories, and continued his medical practice, a “stomach condition” led to multiple
surgeries. While few reports surfaced about the precise cause or condition of Fisher’s health, The Crisis
noted when he had received a diagnosis of “a heavy cold.” On December 26, 1934, as The New York
Times reported on “the merriest” Christmas holiday since the Great Crash, Fisher passed away at
Edgecombe Sanitarium in Harlem. He was 37 years old. The Times noted he had suffered “a long
illness.” The Providence Journal reported it had been “a short illness.” Three days later, he was buried
beside his mother in the Bronx.

Zora Neale Hurston transmitted a message by telegram to Fisher’s wife: “The world has lost a genius.
You have lost a husband and I have lost a friend.” Langston Hughes later wrote, “I guess Fisher was too
brilliant and too talented to stay long on this earth.”

Days later, a posthumous short story was published in Metropolitan, carrying Fisher’s detective-like

doctor into another mystery. With support from the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress
Administration, in 1936 Orson Welles brought The Conjure-Man Dies to the stage of the Lafayette
Theatre in Harlem. Fisher’s wife and son kept his copyrights active, and his sister retained drafts of
Fisher’s manuscripts, family correspondence and other records, which found their ways into the
archives of Brown University, Emory University and the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture. But with time, Fisher’s legacy faded.

“He was actually one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance,” said Delia Steverson, an
assistant professor of African American literature at the University of Florida. “He characterizes this
assertiveness, this pride, this independence, this unadulterated creativity.”

(The Conjure-Man Dies at Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, 1936; photo credit: Library of Congress)

More than 50 years passed after Fisher’s death before the University of Missouri Press compiled a
collection of his short stories. In the 1990s, the University of Michigan Press reissued both novels. A
now defunct London publisher included Fisher as Black Classics, and Fazi Editore in Rome brought out
an Italian translation, Dark Harlem. After a 2017 hardcover edition, in January HarperCollins released

The Conjure-Man Dies as a paperback and e-book, with The Walls of Jericho due to follow in May.

“When these books are published, there needs to be fanfare,” said Ray Rickman, executive director of
Stages of Freedom, a nonprofit that promotes Black cultural events in Rhode Island. “It needs to be
orchestrated, and there’s no orchestra leader.”

Rickman features Fisher during Stages of Freedom’s cultural walking tours in Providence. The
organization is fundraising to establish a museum about Rhode Island’s African American history, and
Rickman said the nonprofit is in discussions with the Classical High School Alumni Association to
produce a booklet and display on Fisher for students and libraries. In recent years, artist Sandra Smith
stitched both of Fisher’s novels into a square on a wall quilt commissioned for Roger Williams
University, and the Rhode Island Black Historical Society and the Rhode Island Historical Society have
curated exhibits featuring the life of the author.

At the University of Florida, Steverson included Fisher among two dozen literary figures and
publications for a Wiki Education project to improve the quality of Wikipedia entries related to the
African diaspora. Students in her survey course on African American literature conducted research,
presented their findings in class, and drew from 275 references to make nearly 800 edits to improve the
Wikipedia pages of their assigned topics. Within two months of their semester’s conclusion, their
updated entries were viewed almost 40,000 times.

“Work like Wikipedia is going to help to provide open access to knowledge and help to fill these equity
gaps,” said Steverson.

“Fisher demonstrates how certain Black voices get lost throughout time,” she said. “What we don’t want
is for Rudolph Fisher to be lost in translation for the next 50 years or the next 100 years.”

(1990s paperback editions of Fisher’s novels; Image credits: The University of Michigan Press)

Coffee When Quarantined: Stimulating support
for Rhode Island’s roasteries

Tastes of Rhode Island coffee roasters, Borealis and Bolt; photo credit: Sean Carlson

As cafes across the country closed or adjusted their operations to confront public health and financial
concerns during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the National Coffee Association’s annual survey
found 70% of American adults reported drinking coffee at least once per week. If you count yourself in
that tally, whether you prefer to down a quick pick-me-up or linger over a cozy cup, the past few weeks
have likely transformed your coffee routines and rituals — with consequences for local businesses.

After stay-in-place orders went into effect, Rhode Island’s coffee roasteries — determiners of the flavor
profiles you smell and taste, processors turning beans from all over the world into finished roasts, and
guarantors of the coffee you like reaching its point of purchase — witnessed the erosion of wholesale
orders and turned toward delivery, and in some cases contactless pick-up, to continue serving their
customers. Whether you delicately prepare a morning pourover, set your automatic machine with grinds
enough for multiple refills, or are grappling with how to make coffee at home, first you need your beans.
These roasteries shared their experiences and advice when it comes to coffee during troubled times:

Bolt Coffee Company

Roasting coffee beans in Smith Hill, PVD

Four cafes, all currently closed:

– 61 Washington St, PVD

– District Hall, 225 Dyer St, PVD

– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St, PVD

– The Dean Hotel, 122 Fountain St, PVD

The public health crisis struck just after Bolt soft opened its first standalone cafe in downtown PVD. As
well as closing all four locations due to the fallout, Justin Enis, coffee director at Bolt, said the company
lost about 97% of its wholesale volume, with closed restaurants and other cafes cutting back on coffee
orders. With much of its staff out of work, Bolt instituted a virtual tip jar on GoFundMe, committing to
distribute 100% of donations to staff who relied on tips and to make company contributions based on
coffee sales. A surge in online orders — a 10X increase, said Enis — has been a bright spot during a
dark time. To support emergency workers, Bolt has provided coffee, granola bars and juice to the
Providence Fire Department and Kent Hospital in Warwick with an open call for future collections.

How to order: Purchase through the Bolt website. Local customers can choose to collect their orders
at Bolt’s roastery (96 Calverley St, PVD), which remains open for pick-ups from Monday to Friday
between 9am and 5pm. Bolt asks customers to wait until at least noon of the day following their order.

Special deals: Bolt ships online orders of any size within the US at a flat rate of $5. Keep an eye out for
short-term specials: Bolt ran a two-week discount of 20% for all online orders and a flash sale featured
12 oz. bags of the Honduras Rafael Lara for $12, roughly 15% off its regular price, while supplies
lasted.

Coffee subscriptions: Bolt offers its Roaster’s Choice Subscription, modeled on taste profiles — “easy
all-day drinking,” “new and exciting” or “mix it up” — at five price tiers ranging between $17 and $56
per month based on the quantity of coffee. Subscribers are encouraged to share their taste preferences.

Additional retail: Bolt mug, insulated coffee tumbler, AeroPress coffee maker and gift cards.

Roasting status: To manage freshness with online orders and shipping, Bolt has changed its
production process from roasting back-to-back on Mondays and Tuesdays to roasting on Mondays and
Thursdays.

New tastes: Snapchilled Coffee: This iced coffee from Kagumoini, Kenya, was crafted with Elemental
Beverage Company in Watertown, Massachusetts, by flash chilling large batches of hot coffee to
maintain acidity, body and flavor. “That means peaches and caramel notes all day,” said Enis. Single
cans or four-packs are available for pick-up at Bolt’s roastery or for delivery through Elemental. Mirror
Mirror: Justin Enis of Bolt and Rob Rodriguez of Night Shift in Everett, Massachusetts cupped and
coordinated together for a joint release modeled off craft brewery collaborations. The result, said Enis,
is “a cherry bomb of a Colombian coffee from Cauca.” Bloom: Bolt released its Spring Seasonal Blend,
promising notes of brown sugar, citrus notes and tropical sweetness.

Different approaches: “We shifted the whole business model and roastery space to facilitate the
massive uptick of online orders and local pick-ups,” said Enis. With in-person chats and training on hold,
Bolt turned to Instagram for live home-brew sessions and IGTV video guides for coffee instruction.

Ending on a high note: “It has been humbling to see the response in folks supporting us and feels so
good to see everyone excited and sharing their joy for simply having coffee,” said Enis. “Our mission is
to drive community through hospitality, and we aim to still achieve this despite the distance.”

Borealis Coffee Company

Roasting coffee beans in Pawtucket and Riverside

One cafe, currently closed:

– 250 Bullocks Point Ave, Riverside (East Providence)

After more than three years in a former railway station along the East Bay Bike Path, Borealis opened a
new roastery in Pawtucket shortly before the pandemic caused the doors of its Riverside cafe to close
on customers. “I’ve debated about a take-out option,” said owner Brian Dwiggins, “but my thought is
that if we’re supposed to be helping flatten the curve, then we shouldn’t be encouraging people to leave
their homes when they can have it delivered.” Borealis committed to allocate 20% of online sales to
employees who lost their jobs and to continue health insurance for those who had enrolled in a work-
provided plan. “I feel that it’s a little more tangible for the customers to see that their support is still
going to the baristas they know and love,” said Dwiggins. “Doing more to promote online sales was one
of my goals for this year, but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

How to order: Purchase through the Borealis website. In-person pick-up is not available at the
moment.

Special deals: A five-roast sampler ($65) runs roughly 15% less than if each 12 oz. or 16 oz. bag of
coffee were purchased separately. The addition of 5 lb. options includes a built-in bulk discount.
Shipping is free on orders above $35.

Coffee subscriptions: Borealis runs a Coffee Club featuring one or two bags of coffee per month,
offered in six-month or one-year increments. Roast preferences and favorite regions are encouraged.

Additional retail: Borealis latte-art patches, enamel pins, mugs and trucker hats.

Roasting status: Borealis dropped one day in its roasting schedule, moving from four days per week
during normal operations (ie, from Tuesday through Friday) to three. By roasting on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays, Dwiggins said Borealis is better able to process and ship online orders.

New tastes: “With our new roaster, we’re still fine tuning the roasts and continuing to weigh which
coffees are better in Riverside and which coffees are better in Pawtucket,” said Dwiggins. “It’s a very
cool machine, so we’re really taking the time to dig in and wrap our heads around the bells and
whistles.” In mid-April, Borealis plans to introduce its new Ursa Major blend. With astronomical
tendencies intact, the roast honors the constellation that contains the Big Dipper and can be prepared
with a V60 dripper.

Different approaches: Since cupping has proven challenging with social distancing, Dwiggins has
been conducting his tastings at home. Borealis is also in the process of certifying some coffees as
organic.

Ending on a high note: “Small businesses are directly connected to the community,” said Dwiggins.
“We are your neighbors, friends, and family members. Our businesses support other local businesses,
and our employees support other small businesses and each other, so we have a much larger effect on
the local economy than a national chain with the same number of employees.”

Coastal Roasters

Roasting coffee beans in Tiverton

One cafe, open for pick-up/take-out;

– 1791 Main Rd, Tiverton

With a cafe and on-site roasting in Tiverton, Coastal Roasters relies on the support of its community,
especially with seasonal ups and downs. Although revenue has dropped, with wholesale orders from
restaurants and other cafes falling roughly 80%, founder Donald Machado said the retail business and
grocery orders have remained steady and robust. “As owners, we have the typical stresses of balancing
the safety of customers and employees and ourselves with the ability to provide a service and earn a
living,” said Machado. “It causes extra stress not knowing the duration of the new environment and its
short- and long-term impacts on business viability, but we feel blessed to be able to stay open even in its
more constrained form.” Machado said he hopes their coffees can bring normalcy to people’s routines.

How to order: Coastal Roasters is currently open for pick-up/take-out of beans, beverages and pastries.
Pick-up orders can be placed in advance using a Square site or by calling 401-624-2343. Mail order
requests for delivery can only be placed by phone.

Current specials: A minimum order of two bags of coffee beans receives same-day drop-off for free in
Little Compton, Tiverton and select areas in Portsmouth.

Additional retail: Coastal Roasters hats, mugs and clothing, local honey and loose-leaf teas, equipment
including French presses and AeroPress coffee makers, and gift cards, through Square for online orders
and at the cafe for in-store purchases.

New tastes: Coastal Roasters created a custom blend for Le Bec Sucré bakery in Middletown, featuring