Between the River and the Railroad Tracks

On Sale: Nov 17, 2026
Page Count: 320 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
ISBN-13: 9780316564335

$14.99

$19.99 CAD

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Appealing to readers of The Yellow House and The Men We Reaped, MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Nicole R. Fleetwood shares her personal story of moving up and out of a forgotten Rust Belt town and into the prestigious halls of academia, interrogating how her ascension is in stark contrast to the decline of the All-American Midwest that shaped her.

During the 70s, Hamilton, Ohio, was filled with smiling children and parents excited for their futures. It was poised to be the next rapidly industrializing city, with a union-strong working class and the determination of Black excellence. It stood as a demographic marker for the nation, an index of everyday life and politics. Every four years presidential candidates held rallies and took press photos in the historically Black neighborhood, the Second Ward. And yet, as the late 20th century took hold, it became the place where many of the boys Nicole R. Fleetwood knew growing up have killed or been killed.

Situated in what used to be a vibrant Black Midwest community, Between the River and the Railroad Tracks is a record of Fleetwood’s life and a portrait of a place in transition. The Second Ward would be devastated by hyper-policing, crime, and drugs. The Black and white working-class core of the town would replace their union affiliation with a religious fervor, praying for better days.

From a leading scholar whose work has been hailed as “profoundly revisionist” (NBCC) and “elucidating” (MacArthur Foundation), Between the River and the Railroad Tracks braids Fleetwood’s indelible story with the narrative of forgotten Black midwestern communities for an unforgettable portrait of the working-class America Hillbilly Elegy overlooked.

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Nicole R. Fleetwood is the inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication in the Steinhardt School at New York University. A MacArthur Fellow, she is a writer, curator, and art critic whose interests are contemporary Black diasporic art and visual culture, gender and feminist studies, creative nonfiction, prison abolition and carceral studies, and poverty studies. She is the author Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination, and Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness.

Praise for Marking Time:
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
A Smithsonian Book of the Year
A New York Review of Books “Best of 2020” Selection
“Profoundly revisionist.”
National Book Critics Circle
“[An] absorbing book…Fleetwood seeks to revise the mainstream media narrative.”
New York Times Book Review
“Elucidating the cultural and aesthetic significance of visual art created by incarcerated people.”
MacArthur Foundation
“[Fleetwood] brings together an impressive array of paintings, sculptures, murals, and photos that speak to the impact of incarceration on American life…In amplifying the stories of those marked by incarceration, she makes visible the individuals and families the carceral state has tried so hard to disappear and silence.”
Los Angeles Review of Books
“[An] ambitious book…Fleetwood deftly weaves personal narrative together with nuanced readings of artworks created by incarcerated people…She models how creative expression can build the coalitions necessary for imagining and realizing a more just society.”
Smithsonian
“An urgently political text…Fleetwood’s analysis follows a narrative arc that moves across artistic mediums and within the physical architecture of prison itself…Marking Time moves fluidly between this art historical survey and a sharp attention to the social apparatuses that have enabled the very foundation of the prison state.”
The Nation
“Marking Time is a tremendous achievement… It is the kind of book that stays with you long after you finish, inspiring change in us all.”
Elizabeth Hinton, author of America on Fire

Nicole R. Fleetwood

About the Author

Nicole R. Fleetwood is the inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication in the Steinhardt School at New York University. A MacArthur Fellow, she is a writer, curator, and art critic whose interests are contemporary Black diasporic art and visual culture, gender and feminist studies, creative nonfiction, prison abolition and carceral studies, and poverty studies. She is the author Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination, and Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness.

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