Survival of Species
the BLOG
Good or bad, the people I grew up with in my neighborhood were part of my life. They were just human beings trying to exist the best way they knew how, coping with their pain and hopes in an imperfect world.
Everyone who knows me has heard me tell about my crazy childhood adventures growing up in the South Bronx. But in writing my story, Survival of Species, I remembered deeper than I thought I ever could -- reliving the brutality and fear, the crushing erosion of self, and the shame I kept hidden inside for a long lifetime.
And though my experience is from a different time and place in history, it gives voice to generations of defenseless children, abused in countless ways, whose pain still lives inside them, spilling out into their adult lives as it did in mine. I want them to know they can survive and live a creative life.
LATEST
I was two years old in 1938. These were the hard times of the Great Depression, and the WPA was at its peak. My father, Manny, dug ditches during the day, and at night, he worked in the garment district making buttonholes on garments. Still, it wasn’t enough to feed a family of six […]