The Project
I’m a poet and oral historian and in the Fall of 2025, photographer Emma Brown and I photomapped gentrified and gentrifying neighborhoods in Central El Paso. Then, in the Spring of 2026, I interviewed several community members about their experiences, particularly concerning housing insecurity and displacement, three of whom agreed to share their stories in a public forum. I also shared my own experiences moving to Northeast El Paso after Central became unaffordable.
Working together with Emma, I put together a multi-modal mosaic zine where excerpts from the interview transcripts appear alongside photos from the neighborhoods, community sourced maps, archival images and poems rooted in community storytelling to wrestle with the many voices of grief, hope, community, displacement and change in Central El Paso and beyond.
Abigail Carl Klassen, Poet and Project Coordinator
Emma Laura Brown, Photographer and Web Designer
Emma is a mixed media artist and photographer who grew up in Pennsylvania and Ohio cornfields. After volunteering and working with Annunciation House, a refugee hospitality center at the US-Mexico border, she has now made El Paso, Texas her home.
This is a project made possible by grant funding from the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life (IDCL), a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit.