LaToya Ruby Frazier
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint is Family in Three Acts
$90
This book is co-published by The Gordon Parks Foundation and The Steidl Museum, 2022:
LaToya Ruby Frazier first traveled to Flint, Michigan in 2016 as part of a magazine commission to create a photo essay about the water crisis. It was during this time that Frazier met Shea Cobb — a Flint poet, activist, and mother, who became Frazier’s collaborator in what would evolve into this five-year body of work. Divided into three acts, Flint is Family follows Cobb as she fights for the wellbeing of her family and community.
In Act I, Cobb is introduced, along with her family and The Sister Tour, a collective of women artists. Cobb lives with her mother and her daughter, Zion. She works as a school bus driver and hairstylist, while launching her career as a poet, writer and singer. To protect her daughter’s health, Cobb makes the critical decision to leave her mother and friends in Flint behind, making the reverse migration to Mississippi, where her father resides on family-owned land.
Act II follows Cobb and Zion to Newton, Mississippi, where they move in with Cobb’s father, Douglas R. Smiley. They care for their Tennessee Walking Horses, as well as the land and fresh water springs they will one day inherit. Due to segregation and discrimination in the Newton County school system, Cobb and Zion eventually return to Flint, Michigan.
In Act III, Frazier documents the arrival of a 26,000-pound atmospheric water generator to Flint in 2019. Frazier, Cobb and her best friend Amber Hasan—a hip-hop artist, herbalist and community organizer— helped set up and operate the initiative in their neighborhood. Spurred by the lack of mass-media interest in the impact of this ongoing crisis and inspired by the collaborative work of Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in 1940s Harlem, Frazier ensures that the lives and voices of Flint’s residents are seen and heard in their collective, tireless endeavors to provide a solution to this man-made water crisis.
Flint is Family in Three Acts is a modern survey of the American landscape that reveals the persistent segregation and racism which haunts it. It is also a story of a community’s strength, pride, and resilience in the face of a crisis that is still ongoing.
324 pages, 176 images
Hardback / Clothbound
10.5 x 12.5 inches / 27 x 32 cm
English
ISBN 978-3-95829-753-1
