“When my parents had New Battambang Market, on the second floor was the storage area. That was where I would go after school. I would either hang out in the cash register area or go upstairs to do my homework,” remembers Heng of her parents’ former grocery store on Public Street and Elmwood Avenue. “It would be piles and piles of boxes, kind of like a little fort. The memory of it is imprinted. It's almost passive.” 

With a sign reading “No LNG in PVD,” artist Eli Nixon approaches the microphone at a RI Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) meeting in May 2017. “I'm here on behalf of my father, who was a scientist and oceanographer out of URI who served on CRMC's Scientific Advisory Board on multiple projects related to the Narragansett Bay. His name was Scott Nixon,” they testify. “I'm also here on behalf of my own kid, who lives in Pawtucket with me. I wanted to call on both of them from the past and the future against the proposal of this project and your mandate to protect the resources around Narragansett Bay.” 

“When Black and Native American people are a part of the record, it’s usually in the shadow of the architectural structures of the South Side, and more as background characters or adornments of the story,” declares artist and culture bearer k. funmilayo aileru, who was born and raised on the South Side of Providence. “I quite literally grew up off of Public Street. At one point, I lived directly on Public Street and Plain Street. Then for most of my childhood, I grew on Prairie Avenue, which is parallel to Public Street.”