Notes from Home

EDITED BY JONNA M c KONE

“In Notes From Home, Jonna McKone takes us all with her and her eight traveling companions—formerly homeless or foster care youth —on a journey of exploration across the landscape of their individual lives, as each of them searches for the meaning of home. They draw, photograph, write, and remember, and along the way also manage to redefine what home means not only for themselves but for the rest of us as well. These are just the kinds of transformational stories and images we need to hear and see as our nation looks for ways to support young people who have fallen outside the safety net.”

—Alex Harris, emeritus professor of the practice of documentary and public policy studies, Duke University

“I met Jonna and the Price Family Fellows during a participatory documentary workshop I was facilitating in upstate New York. I was reminded that inserting one’s own voice into the timeline of history like the young people in this book have done is too often a class privilege, yet a radical and necessary act for social change. We thank you for telling your truths.”

—Brenda Ann Kenneally, documentary photographer, founder of Upstate Girls and A Little Creative Class

Notes from Home weaves a tapestry of personal stories from a group of youth who have experienced family insecurity during childhood. At Rutgers University, the Price Family Fellows Program provides financial, emotional, and academic support for students who seek to steer their own narratives and achieve their dreams through education. Eight graduates of the program now share reflections, photographs, and memories in search of new, often surprising meanings of home and family.

Through portraiture, oral history, writing, and family archives, the contributors explore childhood, geography, immigration, education, and family relationships, recovering misunderstood or overlooked moments. In the process of making this work, the group found old family photos, returned to sites of significance, and made new friendships, discovering the transformational potential of this kind of storytelling to reframe hardship, loss, and uncertainty. In the words of one contributor, “I felt like this process was a necessary step that allowed me to acknowledge and comprehend what I was experiencing at the time. It allowed me to create a more coherent understanding that I am who I am because of my past and because I was the one who had control of molding my own, better path.” Each chapter, encompassing one person’s story, is strikingly unique in its vision and approach.

JONNA MCKONE is a Baltimore-based artist, filmmaker, and photographer. Her work, spanning video, photography, and timebased media, has received numerous awards and grants and has been shown in galleries, museums, and film festivals, as well as heard on public radio stations and podcasts.

Mariah

herself as part of three families, biological, adopted and the made. She and her sister were adopted parents as young children and Woodstown, New Jersey. Mariah’s were in their 70s when they them. Mariah’s adopted mother died was in high school and now she is support her adopted father, Lemuel, cancer treatment.

with her father, her sister and Coco, a child the Pierces fostered. in 1953 — she was 70 when she adopted Mariah. Woodstown, New Jersey. He has lived there since 1979. PAGE 96: Pat, who goes to Mariah’s known Mariah since she was five. Over the years, she has filled in where Mariah’s parents 97: Mariah mentors Arianna through a scholarship program for young people from Salem Jersey. PAGES 98–99: Candiece and Mike, both Educational Opportunity Fund Counselors Engineering, at Rutgers University. the Price Family Fellows and is now pursuing a PhD in social work. Rutgers University, where she works as a Program Specialist. Woodstown, NJ. (Archival photographs from Lemuel's collection.)

My mom would bake pies, cakes and meatloaf from recipes in her many cookbooks. Most times I just watched, but when my mom let me help, she would split the mixing bowl down the middle—one side for me and the other for my sister to enjoy the cake batter.

People take for granted that someone will teach them rites of passage, like how to shave your legs or walk in heels. But as you grow, you create your identity with influence from your family. For me, that identity includes being a strong, black woman and having clear morals and values. I found my own family—people who will encourage you, help you grow and accept you for who you are. Family is not defined by blood.

My parents are older than most. Many people think they are my grandparents, but they are not. These two people took my sister and me in after my aunt and birth mother could no longer care for us. They gave me love, a Christian foundation, education and people who have become family.

The summer before my Freshman year at Rutgers University, I was a part of the Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) program for first-generation, economically disadvantaged students. Where I come from, not many people go off to school. Through a rigorous, six-week program that exposed me to campus life and classes, I learned things that my parents weren’t familiar with like financial aid, college course loads, dealing with distance and challenges to my faith. One day during my sophomore year, it felt like everything was crumbling around me. I reached a breaking point. I remember walking into the EOF office and balling my eyes out. Candiece and Mike believed in me when I did not and helped me to stand on my own two feet.

232 pp 6.125 x 9.25

978-1-9788-2009-8 paper $34.95S

978-1-9788-2010-4 cloth $120.00SU

March 2023

Media Studies