Eleven Stories High: Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town, 1948-1968

ISBN-13: 9780791446300 / Angielski / Miękka / 2002 / 206 str.

Corinne Demas

Opis

Eleven Stories High is a memoir of a middle-class New York childhood, the perceptions of a girl growing up in a housing project that she deemed a "utopia of the fifties." The story follows the process of memory, rather than the conventions of chronology, and explores the concept of "home," how a place like Stuyvesant Town--impersonal, symmetrical, utilitarian--shapes a childhood.

This poignant memoir of life in Stuyvesant Town, a New York City housing project, describes growing up in what the author deems a "utopia of the fifties." Corinne Demas evokes in convincing detail the friendships, foibles, and fantasies of a girl's coming of age in a "vertical" neighborhood of pets, games, elevator rides, and family life. She follows the process of memory, rather than the conventions of chronology, to take us on a vivid journey of the 1950's and 60's America of Halloween costumes, roller skating, the new T.V. culture, high school dances, and music lessons. She lovingly tells of her father--an unconventional dentist--and her mother, both a traditional housewife and a high school biology teacher.