The Stoop & The Steeple

Three lives, intertwined, two centuries apart. An exploration of the complexities of race and power at an intimate level.

In The Stoop and the Steeple, Nancy Meyer directs an uncompromising lens at the fifteen years she spent with Mel, a Jamaican artist she met on a New York stoop, and faces the memory of Zebulon, a man her ancestors enslaved. A man who climbed a steeple and crowed. Was it for freedom? We will never know, but the mystery of this image drives the speaker into unexpected discoveries.

Nancy and Mel married, raised a child, divorced. Zebulon ran away, was captured, and sold. Through lyric and narrative poetry, Nancy tells a personal story against the backdrop of 18th century documents and her eighth-great-grandmother’s diary. The poems create a prism, each one catches a different light, expanding our vision. Of a mixed-race marriage, of the dreams that twisted into white supremacy, of the stories families tell and those they keep secret.

Together with its reader guide, The Stoop and The Steeple invites deeper contemplation of idealism, rupture, pain, and love across generations and in Modern America, and a study resource for educators, social justice groups, and individuals.