More Dreamers of the Golden Dream (PB) (2021)

Why do story and photograph work so well together? How is it that a wonderful story told to me on a front porch can be enhanced so much by black and white photography in a way that the human brain responds viscerally and takes in the entire world?

When I first stepped onto the driveway at 4289 Michael Street, my life was changed by Alberta and General Sims, the royalty who held court at the community gatherings in that ribbon of cement leading to a carport under which the stories of six generations flowed out with laughter and shouting. Once Alberta said to me, You know, everything stays in your rememory. And when my daughters were born, and Dwayne Sims and I brought them to the driveway, they learned what true loyalty and kinship meant.

All of the places in More Dreamers of the Golden Dreammean that to the people whose stories and images are here -- whether it's the iconic Zacatecas Café and the Medina family that feeds thousands; the parishioners at Our Lady of Guadalupe tracing ashes onto the foreheads of the faithful; the boxers in the ring housed inside the old kindergarten building of Lincoln School, once Irving School, where Alberta stood with her friend Susan Strickland; the sidewalk in front of Orange Valley Lodge #13 set with folding chairs and narrative.

These dreamers and their dreams are eternal, as long as there is smoke and laughter, hymnals and ringing, hands lifted to spirits and hands holding disks of ground corn, when all feels golden. As long as there are hands slamming dominoes onto a shaking table, lacing gloves and considering how to duck and move, and someone calling out a story, we are eternal. Let the circle be unbroken, as the new generations of dreamers walk on our sidewalks, enter into our doors, and tell their own stories of rememory and love.