Tenement Talk: Moon and the Mars

Enjoy a conversation with playwright and novelist Kia Corthron, author of Moon and the Mars, the story of a young girl, Theo, growing up with her family in Five Points, a diverse Lower Manhattan neighborhood of tenement residents — livestreamed from our 1860s tenement apartment at 97 Orchard Street!

Set between the years of 1853 and 1863, we follow Theo’s coming of age spent in the respective homes of her Black and Irish grandmothers and in an increasingly divided country as it edges closer to the Civil War. As the world around her changes, so does Theo’s understanding of her place within it. A feat of historical research, Corthron immerses the reader in a narrative that coheres newspaper headlines of the era and Theo’s perspective and experience of life. Family and identity are at the heart of this multigenerational story that invites readers to see the past for all its complexity.