On Thursday, December 15 at 6:30 p.m. the Richmond Heights Memorial Library will host Vivian Gibson, author of The Last Children of Mill Creek. This event will take place in the Library’s program room. The Library is located on the 2nd floor of the HEIGHTS Community Center at 8001 Dale Avenue.
Vivian Gibson is a native St. Louisan who grew up in Mill Creek Valley, a neighborhood of St. Louis razed in 1959 to build a highway. Her family, friends, church community, and neighbors were all displaced by this act of “urban renewal.” In this moving memoir, Gibson recreates the everyday lived experiences of her large family, including her seven siblings, her crafty college-educated mother, who moved to St. Louis as part of the Great Migration, and her at-times forbidding father, who worked two jobs to keep them all warm and fed.
Winner of a Missouri Humanities award for literary achievement, The Last Children of Mill Creek is an important book for anyone interested in urban development, race, and community history―or for anyone who was once a child.
The author will be on hand to discuss her work and to answer questions. Copies of The Last Children of Mill Creek will be available for purchase from Subterranean Books.
This event is free and open to the public.