Park Slope Reader

Park Slope Lit

The Ripped Bodice and the Power of Reclaimed Femininity

By Filed Under: Park Slope Lit

It’s Portlandia’s Women and Women First but this one seems a bit more pink, a lot more inclusive, and all about love and community. 

By now you’ve heard about them, read about them, joined one of their book clubs, or at least been stopped in your tracks by our lovely new pink neighbor on 5th Avenue. The Ripped Bodice is the talk of the Slope.

Lucky me, after all the wonderful and well-deserved press that sisters and co-owners Leah and Bea Koch have already received, Leah agreed to sit down with me for an interview. And for my Park Slope Reader debut!

Landing in step with the likes of Barbie, Heartstopper, and The Summer I Turned Pretty, there was a line down the block awaiting the grand opening of their Park Slope location on August 5th. Their opening day featured a book signing by Casey McQuiston, author of Red, White and Royal Blue, just five days before the movie based on it was released. These sisters know when to pounce on opportunities. 

“It was an idea we came up with and believed in and just went full speed ahead with. I don’t really wait for anything,” Leah told me with a laugh. The sisters were 23 and 25 when they launched their first store in Los Angeles. 

“When you have an idea that you think no one else has thought of, it’s for one of two reasons. One, it’s not a good idea. Or two, this is a huge hole and I’m going to be the one to fill it. We went with option number two.” 

The Koch sisters opened the first romance-only bookstore in the United States, and their idea caught on. Since they opened their first store in LA in 2016, more romance bookstores have popped up around the country, and they have found community with one another. “It’s a tiny network literally 10 people,” Leah counted them on her fingers. They’re all in touch, and each new store has reached out to the trailblazing Koch sisters who are excited about the growth of romance bookstores in the US.It’s a beautiful network of women supporting women. 

As for choosing Park Slope for their second location, it just made sense. Their family is here and growing! Leah moved here to run the Park Slope location, while Bea runs the original LA store. 

“To be honest, THIS is why we moved to Park Slope.” Leah held up her phone for me to see the background. Her nephews, Mo (3 ½ years) and Saul (7 months).  

Bookstore culture and the importance of reading was woven into the sisters’ lives from early on. Trips to local bookstores were a Sunday afternoon treat in their family. 

“Our parents encouraged us to read a lot but also spent a lot of time emphasizing how vital bookstores are to communities”. That sentiment is palpable inside The Ripped Bodice, which has been transformed from a pet supply store into a truly whimsical, welcoming space. 

Aided by her degree in Visual and Performing Arts Studies, Leah performed the renovations herself. She documents the process on TikTok which earned her a huge following before the store even opened its doors. Artistry and passion have been etched into every corner, and the patrons can feel it. Many have mentioned spending more time in the store than they would have anticipated due to the environment Leah has carefully created. 

“I wanted to be a production designer, and now I’ve designed my own stores.” Manifestation, baby! 

They also take pride in asking their readers the right questions to find the books they’ll enjoy the most. In fact, Leah helped me pick out three books during our interview.  

Their reach extends far beyond their local patrons and fellow romance bookstore owners. They’ve gained fandom from all over the country, including romance novelist and former Georgia State Representative Stacey Abrams, who has been a patron and fan and since their beginnings in LA. In 2017, Abrams tweeted a shoutout to The Ripped Bodice and they are now “internet pals”. 

“We literally got the tweet printed on a t-shirt.” Leah emphasized the impact Abrams had on their business. Small favors from people with influential platforms go a long way for small, family-run shops. They have since hosted twitter Q&As together, hosted fundraisers, and participated in a project that raised nearly $500k for Abrams’ 2018 gubernational campaign.

The Koch sisters admired that Abrams was so proud of her career as a romance novelist during her election, despite criticism. Many of her opponents attacked her romance novels and writing in general, focusing on what they saw as trivial pursuits despite her extensive law career and years serving as a member of the Georgia General Assembly.

Abrams’ unabashed love of the romance genre mirrors the identity of The Ripped Bodice. The genre has historically been painted with a trivial or salacious lens, which has caused many readers to feel a sense of shame for their interests. The psychological pink tax of literature. Leah blames this on the misogyny and sexism still prevalent today. 

“We are doing a better job of interrogating our own internal biases, and other people’s as well. We’re not born thinking romance novels are dumb.” She points to Gen-Z for making progress towards doing away with romance genre shame. As she put it, “Any 19- year- old is thinking, Why would I care about anyone else’s opinion of what I’m reading!”. And that wisdom is catching on, too.  

A “bodice ripper” is an outdated term for sexually explicit historical romance novels. Some readers are offended by the term and even see it as a slur, albeit “a slur against an inanimate object”, as Leah candidly put it. While you can certainly find bodice rippers at The Ripped Bodice, they have a lot more to offer, and the store leans more family-friendly than erotic.

“There is so much power in reclaiming language, especially in a loving way and a way that acknowledges our history”. 

The history of the romance genre, like most, is not without its flaws. Indigenous people have historically been fetishized in romance novels, almost entirely by white writers. 

“This genre is not a paragon of perfection, and we shouldn’t gloss over the sins of our past,” Leah admits. She also explained that historically, a publisher’s choices for engaging with a female character’s sexuality were either to have her stay a virgin until marriage or have her be raped. Luckily, the genre has evolved since those days, and from what Leah says, she’s seen a huge difference in just the last 7 years. 

The Ripped Bodice is a powerful statement of reclaimed, joyful femininity – in their name, in their industry, and in their community. 

Community has been important to them from the get-go. “We just became a part of the rhythm of people’s lives”. Leah beamed as she told me about some of her experiences with their customers turned book clubbers turned friends. 

“Someone will come in and tell us about a date they’re going on, then later they tell us they met the parents. Or one of my customers was pregnant when I met her, and now her son is starting 2nd grade!” 

They’ve watched their community grow, seen customers become friends, go on dates, fall in love, adopt pets, have kids, land new jobs, and intertwine with one another in really beautiful ways. 

One of their LA book club members recently got married with many of her fellow book club members joining the couple at the wedding. Real friendships have been formed through The Ripped Bodice community. 

The store has a full calendar of events planned, including book signings, author talks, book club nights, holiday parties, and standup comedy. Their LA store has been producing a standup show for over seven years now, hosted by comedians Jenny Chalikian and Erin Judge. Among Leah’s favorite events was a book talk held by Dr. Emily Nagasoki, director of wellness education at Smith College and author of books Come As You Are and Burnout. Lucky for us, Dr. Nagaski will be visiting the Park Slope location for an event in January to discuss her latest book. Mark your calendars! 

And while you’re at it, join one of their book clubs. I’ll see you there. 

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Family Money

By Filed Under: Local Literature, Park Slope Lit

An interview with Jenny Jackson on the events that inspired her debut novel, Pineapple Street. 

In the opening scene of Jenny Jackson’s hilarious debut novel, Pineapple Street, Sasha, cynically referred to by her in-laws as “Gold Digger”, is reluctantly rummaging through an unused bedroom in her four-story Brooklyn limestone. The bedroom houses an egg-shaped iMac desktop computer, a pipe buried in a drawer, and a ski jacket with a hoard of lift tickets latched to the zipper. The house serves as a portal to 1997. For Sasha, a graphic designer and Brooklyn transplant, returning to the 90s meant living in her rich husband’s childhood home, filled with his memories and family histories, and mostly, “his family’s shit”. 

Pineapple Street tells the intergenerational story of the wealthy Stockton family through shifting points of view, as three sisters navigate the complexities of life, love, class, and privilege. The novel reads like a sociological survey of the one percent, giving its audience an inside look into the lives of Brooklyn’s elite. Jackson, a Vice President and Executive Editor, takes inspiration from the early days of the pandemic and her slice of Brooklyn Heights to chronicle the Stockton sisters’ eccentricities, competing interests, lessons learned, and above all, their loyalty that is bound by the ancestral limestone on Pineapple Street. 

In a phone call, Jackson and I discussed the widening gap between racial and economic inequality, WASP family dynamics, the trust-fund anti-capitalist millennials who inspired Pineapple Street, and what MTV’s “Cribs” taught us about money. Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

Pineapple Street is your first published book. Congratulations! 

Thank you. I’ve worked in publishing for 20 years, but this is my first time sitting in the author’s seat. 

Yes, I read that you are an Executive Editor and Vice President at Alfred A. Knopf. Have you written other books that have not been published? 

I had not written any books before 2020. During the pandemic, I began writing something else as an exercise before writing Pineapple Street. It was an exercise in releasing demons and figuring out how to write a novel. Pineapple Street is my first complete book. 

I always wonder if novelists have written books that have been shelved and if their debut novels are their first attempts at publishing. You began writing Pineapple Street during the pandemic? 

Yes, I started writing it at the end of 2020. I was living in Brooklyn Heights on Pineapple Street and wasn’t leaving a 10-block radius. I missed my friends and was lonely; I walked around the neighborhood every day. I believe that the novel grew out of the experience of needing people to talk to. 

It’s interesting that inventing characters and writing dialogue are derivatives of pandemic-caused loneliness. Was there an aha moment that led you to write a book set in Brooklyn Heights? 

The novel is set in Brooklyn Heights because I felt so intensely connected to my tiny slice of Brooklyn at that moment. Three distinct lines of thought came together. I spent a lot of time with my family during the pandemic. I have two small children and we spent a lot of time with my parents and in-laws. A good friend of mine had the experience of living in her in-law’s beautiful brownstone while they were living elsewhere. She moved into her husband’s childhood home with their baby. It was strange because all his parents’ stuff was still there. She would tell me outrageous stories of living amongst their things. And then, simultaneously, on my wanderings, I became obsessed with this house on Pineapple Street. It was so big! No matter where you lived during the pandemic, your own four walls began to feel like they were closing in on you— but this house was enormous! It had huge windows showing a parlor with a chandelier and a grand piano. I fixated on who lived there. I mean, who has a grand piano in the city? Lastly, I was inspired by Zoë Beery’s article in The New York Times called, The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism. She writes about socialist-minded millennial heirs who are set to inherit vast fortunes that are at odds with their morals. They want to give away their money and the family lawyers are trying to stop them. These three ideas spun around in my head. I would write, go for a run down by the Brooklyn waterfront, and then come home and pour these ideas into my computer. 

Pineapple Street interlaces the lives of three sisters who are each navigating the flaws and insecurities that they believe are tied to generational wealth. In Sasha’s case— acquired wealth. Their recognitions of class and privilege are largely introspective and somewhat contradictive; they all seem to be searching for fulfillment, or, at the least, contentment. How did the characters develop? 

Sasha, the in-law, came to me first. Her story is a natural place for the novel to open because she invites the reader into the rarified world of the Stockton family. She gives the reader an unvarnished look into how wildly strange the family is. I also knew I wanted to create a character who was around a decade younger than Sasha. I am a geriatric millennial, on the cusp of Gen X. My attitude as a young person was different from the Gen Z attitude about money. That’s where Georgiana’s story came from. She is delightfully bratty and, at the beginning of the novel, is very self-absorbed. I also knew that I wanted another point of view from someone inside the family who could contrast the attitudes of Georgiana and Sasha, so I wrote Darley’s character. She took a while to figure out. It wasn’t until I changed her name that her character started to flow. 

I agree that Darley’s name is fitting. I enjoyed reading her corresponding chapters. She is outwardly poised and charismatic in her way— although we learn that her confidence is overshadowed by regret. Are there women in your life or events you experienced that helped shape Darley’s narrative and internal battles? 

My best friend from college has children that are a full decade older than mine. She and I have had many interesting conversations about what that has meant for her life. She threw herself into motherhood while I threw myself into work. There were a lot of times when she grappled with trying to find meaning as her children grew older. She has done so beautifully but it was, in some ways, more complicated for her when she entered the workforce later. I was well-situated in my career before I had kids. Our conversations have informed the way I wrote Darley, who struggles with the same questions. 

The novel captures the essence of millennial and Gen Z culture and the jarring differences between younger generations and older generations. Tilda’s character struck me. I am entertained by her brazen human qualities although they are out of touch with the cultural shifts— like economic and racial inequality— that her children are mindful of. 

Yes, Tilda is the most extreme character. Her confidence is a combination of willful blindness and an attitude that if you wear a stiff upper lip, everything will be fine. Some of that is generational but her attitude toward her children is like her attitude toward money. She is willfully unexamined. 

Right, and it’s clear to the reader that despite Tilda’s idiosyncrasies, her children rely on her. 

I loved Tilda as a matriarch. Families that have a strong matriarch like Tilda or otherwise, have a fascinating way of orbiting around that person. She might not be the most emotionally in touch with her children, but she is the first-person Darley calls when she has the flu, and she’s the one Georgiana both relies on and blames for her problems. 

The Stockton sisters internalize and excuse their race and class privilege. They intentionally practice wokeism in a way that is relatable to anyone who shares one or both characteristics. Have you had any of these moments yourself? 

Yes. There are many things that were not examined 10 years ago that we would never do now, like Cinco de Mayo parties in college that were not thoughtful. Thank goodness we’re all waking up and taking a hard look at things we’ve done in the past that are harmful. A lot of people, regardless of background, have had to look at their baked-in racism and classism. 

Georgiana seems to have the most poignant reckoning with her privilege. I adore the scene at the family dinner table where she retells a conversation that she had with Curtis at an Oligarch Chic-themed birthday party. Malcolm, the only person of color at the table, explains the nuances of perpetuating harmful stereotypes.  

Yes, and she is aware enough to be mortified that Malcolm is the one to tell her. 

Right, and she is aware enough to recognize that her family is not fully invested in the conversation anyway. 

The scene gets recreated at the gender-reveal party for Sasha. Tilda regularly hosts theme parties that are full of stereotypes and microaggressions, and it would never strike her as inappropriate. Georgiana is the one to step forward and say “this is problematic” but she’s also wasted and emotionally out of control. 

Earlier in the conversation, you said that the narrative for Pineapple Street was partly inspired by Zoë Beery’s article on the rich millennial heirs who are redistributing their wealth. The editorial foreshadows Georgiana’s character. You also said that you are a “geriatric” millennial. 

How do the millennial and Gen Z attitudes towards wealth differ from that of older generations? 

Growing up in the 80s and 90s, our attitudes about money were culturally shaped by shows like Troop Beverly Hills, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and MTV’s Cribs. We grew up thinking that money was awesome and if given our choice, we’d like to have a lot of it. It was a simple relationship between money and wealth that was unexamined. Over time, as income inequality has become greater, and the events of Occupy Wallstreet happened— and Bernie ran for office and AOC became a major player— our national attitudes towards wealth have shifted and young peoples’ attitudes towards inherited wealth have changed. I don’t think these young people have the same unexamined relationship with money. Gen Z is terrific. Their socially minded attitudes are going to help eliminate the huge income gap. 

You begin the novel with a Truman Capote epigraph: “I live in Brooklyn. By Choice.” Where in the writing process did this quote come to you? 

The quote came late. In the novel, Georgiana tells the story of the Truman Capote house on 70 Willow Street. In recent years the CEO of Rockstar Games bought the house and wanted to put in a pool. The neighborhood was outraged at the changes he wanted to make. It turns out that Truman Capote borrowed an apartment in the basement from a friend but never owned it. I lived in Manhattan when I was 22. I would hear people complain about the “B&T” people, meaning the “bridge and tunnel” people. There was this ridiculous snobbism about people who didn’t live in Manhattan. At the time, I would hear that and believe that living in Brooklyn was undesirable. It’s funny because the young people moving to NYC now all want to live in Brooklyn. It’s sought after, even prohibitively sought-after. 

Jenny Jackson is a Vice President and Executive Editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Pineapple Street is her first novel.

What Would I Wear?

By Filed Under: Park Slope Lit

I’ve never been completely comfortable with the concept of dating, and the though of doing so in later life terrifies me to no end. By comparison, I know people my age who actually enjoy the dating process-combing through dating apps, dressing up, and meeting perfect strangers.

For many years now, I have been a stay-at-home worker, a Zoomer ahead of the times. Even before COVID-19 made hermits and multitaskers of us all, turning our kitchen tables into office space, I “commuted” from my bed to my desk each morning, ready to start my day. 

So, it’s no surprise that my typical work attire has been casual, sometimes bordering on the eclec- tic. This morning, for instance, I threw on a warm, furry bathrobe, cotton leggings, and festive Christmas slipper socks, even though that holiday has long since passed. I gave my dark, graying hair a quick brush and avoided makeup altogether. Later when I run out to do errands, I’ll slip into a pair of trusty jeans, a sweater, well-worn boots, and one of three sets of favored silver earrings. Over the years, I’ve fallen into an all-too- predictable comfort zone, both in mind-set and appearance—a pattern that’s had both its upsides and potential downfalls.

For the most part, I’ve embraced my casual way of life and its associ- ated style of dress for nearly two decades now. Rather than worry about what to wear to the “office” each day, I’ve focused on adopting and raising a daughter, caring for elderly parents, deepening my spiritual life, tend- ing to friendships. For better or for worse (depending on how you view things), I’ve mostly—and unabashedly—been single, so dressing up and pulling together a cute outfit has not been a top priority.

To be fair, I am not—and never have been—an enthusiastic or casual dater. In my sixty-four years on the planet, I’ve had my share of long-term relationships, ambiguous partnerships, and cherished friendships with men. I’ve even had my celebrity crushes. But I’ve never been completely comfortable with the concept of dating, and the thought of doing so in later life terrifies me to no end. By comparison, I know people my age who actually enjoy the dating process—combing through dating apps, dress- ing up, and meeting perfect strangers. If one date doesn’t work out, they simply move on to the next. Impressed by their resilience, I call them pro- fessional daters.

On occasion, however, I’ll find myself fighting of a bout of regret should I see a couple with that certain glow, that divinely fated relationship. I won- der how it might feel to have that rare soulful bond, a special connection of my own. In these moments, I think that maybe, just maybe, I could ven- ture out of my comfort zone and take a chance at dating. But, at the age of sixty-four and counting, I seriously wonder, What would I wear?

When I was younger, in my twenties and thirties, long before I became a mother, I was more cavalier in my approach to dressing up. Feeling more confident in my body, I might have thrown on a short, fitted skirt, a sleeve- less top, and a pair of suede pumps for a night out with friends. I might have painted my lips a bright scarlet red or attempted a smoky eye just for fun. In those days, I walked with a certain levity, even a bit of swagger. Back then, the weight of my emotions had yet to wear me down. I had fewer worry lines, fewer disappointments, and ten fewer pounds to cam- ouflage. Of course, I had my problems and insecurities then; it’s just that life—and my wardrobe issues—seemed simpler.

These days I dress not to stand out but to cover up, to feel more invis- ible. I dress to hide the various assaults on my body sustained over the years—the surgeries in my fifties and sixties that caught me of guard; the death of my parents (and younger family members) that struck me repeatedly with blows of grief. I dress for comfort and dependability as a

way to center—and protect—myself from the world. I dress as a woman in her sixties, not sure how to change her style.

Not long ago, I spoke to three friends about the topic of dressing and dating. My friend Shawn, though partnered for years, had this to say: “I think comfort is necessary when you go on a date at our age. It’s respectful to be clean and neat and have a bit of polish, but not to the extent to where you feel vulnerable or on display. Haven’t we spent enough of our lives being judged by our physical appearance?” Another friend, Lisa, married for decades and now single, added this: “I’ve been told that we don’t need much makeup at our age. It’s best to let our eyes tell the story.”

Each of these points resonated with me, distinctly. For starters, I’ll admit that part of my reluctance to date comes down to judgment. In my experience, women are held often to a higher standard than men and judged more critically—and perhaps disproportionately—by our physical appearance. We have to try harder to look good, despite all of our accom- plishments. As we age, we are given less of a pass than men are. We are unfairly overlooked by youth, a favored commodity. And while I’ve worked hard for years to develop a sense of self-worth and confidence—based less on looks and fashion and more on my character and values—I’m still at the mercy of these cultural constructs, ingrained deeply within me.

So, when it comes to the topic of dressing and dating, I find myself ask- ing these questions: What would a potential partner think of me when eyeing me up initially—and would I be willing (or tolerant enough) to open myself up to such scrutiny? If I were to attempt to improve my dressing game, with a pair of fitted pants, a scarf, sunglasses, and some makeup— dressing for comfort and polish, as Shawn suggests—would I appear to be somewhat of an imposter? Would a set of new clothes, an upgraded image, conceal the very essence of who I am: a woman in her sixties, who is prone to feeling vibrant and youthful one day, defeated and tired the next? Would a pair of new shoes be enough to disguise my mistrust of men,

based fairly or unfairly on my past? Would my eyes be able to tell my story—and if so, which story would it tell?

My friend Mary has known me since I was twenty-three and a univer- sity student in California. For many years, Mary has heard my tales of life, travel, work, and family, and has been part of the narrative on more than a few occasions. Since we’ve both been independently single for vast stretches of our friendship, we’ve laughed (and cried) over our love lives, our exes, our dreams, our indecisions. So, when I asked Mary recently what I should wear if I were to go on a date at my age, she answered— directly—with her trademark humor, “Some black lingerie?” Her response made me laugh and cringe simultaneously, as I gazed on the snow falling softly outside my window, threw on an extra sweater, and thought, black lingerie would have to wait for another day (or maybe forever).

Part 2

Several months have passed and a bleak winter sky has given way to the gentle unfolding of spring. In a wave of energy this morning, I washed my front windows, swept up dry leaves, and folded a stack of purple sweaters, black jeans, and gray socks, worn to oblivion in the cold. As I felt the warm sun filter in, I drew a sigh of relief—and as I looked out my window, I sensed that my vision was slowly improving, getting clearer. A few months ago, I had one of those unexpected medical events that creep up on you when you’re living life in your sixties. Unbeknownst to me, a layer of scar tissue had formed on the retina of my right eye, so for weeks on end, I was ban- ished to doctors’ offices, to operating rooms, and to my home to recover from surgery. I struggled with blurry vision, a sensitivity to light, and a reluctance to leave my home. The simple thought of socializing, much less dating, exhausted me. I wondered what a path forward might look like.

But with the arrival of spring, and an emergence from the darkness of vision problems, I’ve found a world bathed in color, in light. The signs of hope and renewal—and synchronicities—are everywhere. Earlier

this morning, I looked out my window to find two mourning doves perched on the fire escape, their soft, drawn-out calls piercing the still city air. It’s been said that when a pair of doves come to visit (as they do each spring), they are a symbol of devotion, friendship, and love—a bea- con of healing, forgiveness, peace. An indication to move on.

On this morning in early spring, I stood wrapped in my bathrobe, watching those pufed-up, slender-tailed birds court, preen, and chase one another across leafy yards, devoid of self-consciousness, free. In their grayness, their nakedness, their sheer commitment to the moment, they shared a dance, a journey, however temporary. In my shared grayness, and with my teacup in hand, I turned from the window smiling, ready to start my day.

Reimagining a Used Bookstore

By Filed Under: Park Slope Life, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading

Troubled Sleep aims to reorganize Park Slope’s collection of pre-owned books.

Remarkably, the idea to open a used bookstore in Park Slope was conceived by the founders of Book Thug Nation in only June of this year. Less than six weeks after the idea was casually floated in a meeting, the small book conglomerate opened their newest location, Troubled Sleep at 129 Sixth Avenue, Most recently the home to a neighborhood pet store, the space has been transformed from a muted and easily overlooked storefront into a vibrant, wide-windowed facade. Displayed on both sides of the black and yellow entranceare double-decker carts of used books. Each of them, selling for a dollar.

When I stopped by on a recent afternoon , Alex Brooks was visibly delighted as he rang up a woman with a stack of books held up against her chest, most of which had been selected from the dollar cart. “This is such a terrific find,” Brooks, Troubled Sleep’s manager, said as he flipped through her haul. “Barbara Tuchman might even be one of my favorite historical authors. I’m sad that for many readers, she is considered obscure.” The patron, Donna S, who lives on 8th and Montgomery, agreed. On her way out, she promised to return with decades worth of used books sitting in her house, insisting she’d donate rather than sell.

In Park Slope and surrounding neighborhoods, there are not many used-book stores. There is Unnameable Books on Vanderbilt, and Better Read than Dead in Bed-Stuy, but a signature charm of these stores are the whimsical and chaotic aesthetic of their space. “Used books you can find,” Brooks said when asked what set Troubled Books apart. “But we wanted to take a practical approach to the used-book buying experience.”

This aim speaks to the balance Troubled Books is trying to strike – a bookstore where you can find what you’re looking for and navigate easily, while remaining susceptible to the wide variety of titles you see in between. . About 90% of the store’s books are used. The center display table is reserved for new books, both contemporary and classic. Donna, the stack-carryingcustomer, left with six books. Just one of them was new – Didion’s the White Album – and five used, with bylines like Baldwin, Bentley, and Hemmingway.

While it might seem a bold venture, to open a pre-owned bookstore at the tail end of a pandemic and in the eye of an imaginable recession, the owners of Book Thug Nation are by no means amateur entrepreneurs. Started by four sidewalk booksellers, the group has made a reputation for attracting a wide range of shoppers: collectors of rare works, budding young readers, and everyone in between. Their inaugural store, Book Thug Nation, is a small but formidable used bookstore and literary staple in Williamsburg.

As for Brooks, he, too, is no novice in this world. He has worked with Book Thug Nation for five years:once a loyal customer who caught the attention of the staff with his literary enthusiasm, he was offered the opportunity to help grow the business. Before opening up Troubled Books, he worked at their Manhattan storefront, Codex, on Bleecker Street. Now he is stationed in Park Slope for the foreseeable future, only a few short blocks from where he attended The Berkeley Carrol School 20 years before.

It’s too early to tell If Troubled Sleep is destined for the same success as their sibling locations, which have by now sprouted up all over the world, including cities like Madrid and Valencia. But having walked by several times over the past month, I have yet to see the store without perusing passer-bys looking through – what they may or may not realize – are the bookshelves, quite literally, of their neighbors.

Slope Survey: Jacqueline Woodson

By Filed Under: Park Slope Life, Park Slope Lit

The Slope Survey returns for its 24th installment.

What brought you to Park Slope? 

I grew up in Brooklyn (Bushwick). After college, I heard about a woman looking for a housemate in Prospect Heights. The woman was Linda Villarosa who would become a renown journalist. Linda and I became good friends and when our building was sold, we found an apartment on 6th Avenue and 6th Street. Park Slope’s nickname was Dyke Slope because of the many queer woman living in the area. It was also amazingly racially diverse and beautiful. That was back in the early 90s. Even then, I knew I wanted to settle here and raise a family. And years after that, I, with my beloved, bought a house from two women on 5th Street. The serendipity of it was that one was a librarian and a fan of my work. We kept in touch until her passing a few years back.

What is your most memorable Brooklyn moment?  

Hmmmmm— I had a German Shepherd – Toffee. She was a sable shepherd with a stunning coat. She was also deeply neurotic and so badly trained (my fault). We were watching a parade on 5th Avenue and I was with my friend, Jana who knew Toffee as a dog who barked at every sound and paced our house incessantly. But outside, Toffee lay down and calmly watched the parade and it seemed every single person passing had to stop and have a moment with her. People kept talking about what a spiritual being she was. Jana was wide-eyed and I had to laugh and the outside/inside Toffee. I’m sure I’ve had many memorable moments here but that’s way up there.

Describe your community superpower.  

My community superpower IS my community. Park Slope got less and less diverse as the years passed but my friends and I kept our families close and raised our children together, having Sunday Dinners from the time the children were young till now when some have graduated college. We’ve been intentional about making sure they are in environments where they is not only one like them and that they see themselves reflected in the people around them, the books they read, the shows they watch. My superpower is keeping us close, making sure the dinners continue, the kids remain connected, and we continue to support each other as we do the work we have to do.

If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what would it be?  I wish it was more racially and economically diverse. I wish the Mom and Pop stores that used to exist on 5th Avenue could have survived alongside the restaurants and clothing shops. I wish people said hello to strangers the way they used to do. You see less and less of that here which saddens me.

What do you think Brooklyn will look like in 10 years?Jeez – who knows? I will hopefully still be sitting on my stoop with my computer on my lap as the great world spins around me.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow – YES!!!!! And Does Perkins-Valdez’s Take My Hand – and yes again!

What is your greatest extravagance?I think starting Baldwin For The Arts was HUGE. When I got the Astrid Lindgren Award, I founded it. And when I got the Macarthur, I continued building. (And continue to build). It’s bigger than so many things I’ve done – exhausting and exhilarating.  Oh – and Art! I get really excited by stunning art. I love black and white photographs – Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, James Barnor…

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?Harlem.

Who is your hero, real or fictional?If I started listing my heroes, folks would be reading this for days.

Last Word, What’s is turning you on these days?Walking/runing 5-6 miles a day. SO much easier to do now that the weather is better. 

Jacqueline Woodson is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and she was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, as well as the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. Her dozens of books for young readers include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Year We Learned to Fly, The Day You Begin, and Harbor Me, Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster, and the picture book Each Kindness, which won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award.

Life in Balance

By Filed Under: Books, Community, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading, Reader Excerpt Tagged With: , ,

Excerpted from Tick Tock: Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40 edited by Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin (Dottir Press, 2021

My daughter, Eleni, is twenty-one now, but I distinctly remember a day when she was two and I was desperately trying to convince her to put on her shoes so we could go out to play. Eleni was running around distractedly and wouldn’t listen, while my mother, then seventy-five, was repeatedly asking me unrelated questions—something about a neighbor and what we would like for dinner. As I answered my mother’s questions, she asked them again because she was hard of hearing. For what seemed to be an eternity, I found myself caught in a cycle of speaking louder and louder to a two-year-old who wouldn’t listen and to a seventy-five-year-old who couldn’t hear. To a bystander, the scene may have seemed comical, but I was not amused. 

In retrospect, that particular day was golden. The sun was shining, my father—also seventy-five—was out for a run, and my mother was still able to cook the foods of her native Greece. Though I was an exhausted, older single mother, I found immense joy in (eventually) taking my daughter out to play, and, as an only child, I reveled in the fact that my parents had finally been granted a grandchild. My family now felt whole and complete. 

In a few years’ time, things would change. 

“Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a mother; and as I crept toward forty and remained unmarried, this dream, this ambition, didn’t fade. Then when I was forty-one, a confluence of factors arose that made motherhood seem possible.”

Living in an unusually sizable apartment in Brooklyn, I had a steady job that I loved, supportive parents and friends who resided near my home, and a surprising ally in the Chinese government. Though things have changed since, there existed a window of time, a fortuitous opening, when the Chinese government allowed a single woman over forty to adopt a healthy infant—in most cases, a baby girl. (For me this was a bonus, since I intended to raise a child on my own.) On top of that, the adoption process in China was fairly straightforward; and with some luck, it appeared I could be in China within eighteen months, a new mother to a baby daughter. After much thought and reasonable trepidation, I decided to pursue this option. 

On August 16, 1999, I arrived at a dimly lit registrar’s office in central China, where I was handed an eight-month-old baby. At the age of forty-two, I suddenly became a first-time mother. I named my daughter Eleni in honor of my own mother, who had waited patiently for her first and only grandchild. Then nine days later, we flew home to New York, where my parents and friends greeted us at the airport. Eleni and I were set to begin our new life together. 

Our first two years in Brooklyn passed quickly. Eleni was a happy child, a curious child, a child who never slept. By extension, I was always exhausted, holding down a full-time job, caring for my daughter, having few spare moments to myself. But as an older mother, I viewed this juggling act and ever-present fatigue as a small price to pay for the joy of raising a child. As a parent over forty, I’d had countless years of “me time,” during which I could travel, see friends, build a career. So spending a Saturday afternoon with my parents and Eleni was more than enough to make me happy. Having my mother prepare Greek meals and bring them to our house, or seeing my dad play so energetically in the park with my daughter, fulfilled me. I was grateful for my job, grateful to reside in a neighborhood with other adoptive families and little girls from China, and grateful for the multicultural city in which I lived. By some divine stroke of luck, everything seemed in order. 

But as it happens, the best-laid plans often go awry. On September 11, 2001, when Eleni was almost three, the World Trade Center was hit by terrorists, bringing our city to its knees. Several weeks later, the magazine at which I’d worked for nearly a decade folded, citing a consistent loss of revenue. Then, in the spring of 2004, my seventy-nine-year-old father—the bedrock of our family, a man with boundless energy—was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer. How supremely unfair it felt that a man who had valued his health and had so much to live for would be struck with such a fatal illness. Within six months of his diagnosis, my father died, leaving me with countless business affairs to look after, a broken heart, and a mother and daughter who were beyond bereaved. 

Eleni was five, almost six, when her grandpa died, so it was hard for her to comprehend how this vibrant man had left us. On the playground at school, Eleni would look up at the sky and see her grandfather’s wispy, white hair in the cloud formation above her. In class, she described his spirit as coming to her “like a wind,” helping her with her math problems. My dad was athletic, so in tribute to him, Eleni learned to play soccer and tennis. She was fast on her feet and adopted my father’s work ethic. 

My mother, on the other hand, was seventy-nine when her husband died. For years, her health had been faltering, first with coronary bypass surgery in her early fifties, then later with various issues causing memory loss and pain. My mother was surprisingly strong, having survived not only these health problems but also the shelling of Athens during World War II, yet somehow, she liked to convince everyone that she was weak, a victim who needed constant care. 

My father had been that primary caregiver, her rock—her lifeline to the world. When he died, my mother was understandably adrift. In order to protect her, my father had declined to tell my mother exactly how sick he was, perhaps believing he had more time to live than he did. But her lack of emotional preparedness and the relative speed of my father’s passing sent my mother into a tailspin. There were days when she stubbornly refused to take her medication and her memory loss worsened. There were times when she became short-tempered with Eleni and with me. 

As the weeks passed, I tried to keep our lives in Brooklyn in balance. My daughter was in first grade now, learning to read, write, and socialize. I was working from home as a freelance writer and editor, which gave me flexibility in terms of time and workflow. But every weekend, Eleni and I would run out to my mother’s house some fifty miles away to check up on her and a family friend who’d agreed to stay temporarily. My mother was sad, lonely, and increasingly confused, and it became clear she would soon need a higher level of care. The turning point came a short while later, when my mother arrived at my apartment for an extended visit. As she bent to tie her shoelaces one day, she slipped and fell, fracturing a vertebra in her back. It was the last day my mother would walk independently. She would soon need a wheelchair. 

Faced with this new set of circumstances and knowing my mother could no longer live independently, I decided to move her to Brooklyn, into a sunny assisted-care facility near my home. I hired loving professional aides to care for my mother and I visited almost daily. But although the logistics of having my mother close by made life easier, I was still wracked with guilt. I knew my mom was suffering. 

For one thing, my mother wanted to go home, and home meant her house on Long Island. Because of her deepening dementia and overwhelming grief, my mother couldn’t understand why she couldn’t live alone and why my father had left her. In an effort to comfort her and settle her nerves, I brought my mother some personal belongings, including a painting she loved of me and Eleni. I also brought my six-year-old daughter to visit her whenever possible. Sometimes Eleni would draw or play contentedly, and sometimes we would all sit together on the couch, watching TV. But on other days, both my mother and Eleni would vie for my attention while an aide was trying to talk to me. At still other times, Eleni found it too hard to visit. It was tough for her to reconcile the grandma she’d once known with the one now lying in a hospital bed. How could this be possible? 

For more than eight years, I was tasked with balancing the needs of both my mother and daughter. Early on, I decided it would be easier for me to see my mother on my own, preferably when Eleni was at school or at a friend’s house. I could sit and hold my mother’s hand or help feed her. I could take her to doctor visits, check on her medication, and talk to her aides without interruption. Eleni would come for shorter visits, after school or on the weekends. 

My days with Eleni at home and in the world were cherished times and often proved to be the antidote, the needed balance, to caring for an aging parent. As a first-time mother—and an older one, at that—I loved every stage of Eleni’s development. As she grew, my daughter played sports. She read and watched movies. She danced. She had friends. She grew taller than me and at times her grandmother barely recognized her, instead remembering her as a smaller child. While my mother drifted in and out of reality and often in and out of hospitals and hospice care, my daughter found joy in real-life activities. She was thriving, and her curiosity about the world buoyed me. 

Eleni also knew intuitively that I was doing my best in a difficult situation. From the time she was six until she was fourteen, Eleni watched as I cared for my mother as she edged closer to dying and bounced back again. She, along with family friends, helped me clear out our Long Island home with its more-than-fifty-years’ worth of possessions, and she was there on the tearful day we sold it to help pay for my mother’s care. Five years after my father’s mesothelioma diagnosis, I was diagnosed with early-stage endometrial cancer and required surgery. Eleni was there to greet me at home with her godparents on the day I returned from the hospital. I was fortunate in that Eleni had always been a considerate child and a fairly easy one to raise. And as she grew older and into her teen years, she empathetically cut me slack when my conflicting duties got the best of me. 

In hindsight, it’s hard to say how I—we, all three of us— got through those challenging years. Sometimes things fell apart, such as when an aide, Eleni, and I took my mother to a doctor’s appointment and got stranded when our wheelchair-accessible transport failed to arrive. Other times, I lost my patience; occasionally, I completely lost my temper with everyone. Eleni had hard days of her own and sometimes seemed inconsolable despite my best efforts to support her. But even in my worst moments, I was lucky enough to have a village to help raise my child and care for my aging mother. 

During those years, I thought often of my father and how he had run marathons later into life, driven by a will of steel. When he died, it felt as if I’d followed in his footsteps. My marathon, however, was of an emotional nature, a very long race that would call for a great deal of energy, determination, and grit in order to reach the finish line. But because I was an older parent in my late forties and fifties during those “sandwich” years, I was able to draw on decades of my own life experience and find wells of strength I never believed I had. 

I was also willing to refocus my priorities on both my mother and daughter, knowing I had one shot to get this right. (As a result, my career and personal life were indefinitely put on hold.) It soon became clear that I couldn’t help my mother get “better,” but I was dedicated to helping her find some measure of comfort and peace. Over time she became less verbal, making it hard to know exactly what she needed and why she held on for so long. But as one of her nurses once told me, “She has too much love. She’s not going anywhere.” As for Eleni, I had waited so long to become a mother that I wanted our experience together to be memorable. I wanted to soak up all the time we had at each stage of her journey, whether it was the big things, like going to Disney World when she was nine, or the small things, like watching Harry Potter movies on repeat. Her joy, happiness, and sound emotional development were at the top of my to-do list each and every day.

In the end, my mother chose the time and place of her passing. On February 15, 2013, on what would have been my father’s eighty-eighth birthday and one week short of her own, my mother died in the Brooklyn hospital where I was born more than fifty years earlier. In another act of perfect symmetry, she was holding the hand of my daughter, a child who was then fourteen and had been named after her, years earlier. 

It was an emotional walk home from the hospital that night. But when we arrived back at our apartment, I pulled out my mother’s wedding ring, a simple, silver band with tiny, twinkling diamonds – a symbol of my parents’ long commitment. I slipped the ring onto my hand thinking I might wear it, but it just didn’t look right on me, so I offered it to Eleni. By some stroke of magic, it fit perfectly on her long, slender ring finger, and I joked that my mother’s ring chose its wearer, just like Harry Potter’s wand chose him. 

Eleni has worn my mother’s ring religiously since that night. It traveled with her and protected her on the subways she took to high school. It swam with her and glistened in the turquoise-dappled waters of the Aegean Sea. It accompanied her to college and to a semester abroad in Italy. It has been given a new life, a new set of adventures in a modern world. My mother’s ring was one that I loved and admired during childhood, and it’s a ring my daughter wears proudly now in memory of her namesake. It’s a symbol of the time that my mother, Eleni, and I all spent together—and a symbol that we all made it through. 

Tick Tock reading at Community Bookstore on Wednesday, 10/6 at 7:30PM EDT featuring Laura Broadwell, Cathy Arnst, Jean Leung, Salma Abdelnour, and editors Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin.

The Life of Walt Whitman: Life Requirements

By Filed Under: Park Slope Lit Tagged With: ,

Poet, Philosopher, and Freethinking Revolutionary

Artwork by Selina Alko

One man filled this position from the bottom of his boot soles to the brim of his cocked hat. That was the immortal spirit and man, Walt Whitman. In terms of his poetry, not only was he regarded as America’s greatest writer of verse, but as America incarnate, the very soul of this country. However, he mentions, “ I often reflect, how very different every fellow must have been from the fellow we come upon in myths.”

Yet, just as intriguing is that Walt Whitman sought his identity in the joyful musical cadences of science as seen in his poetry from his great compilation, “Leaves of Grass.” “And what I shall assume, you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” With these words he genuflected his regard that as Americans, we are all gifted the same freedoms as much as the same air that we breath and the same land upon which we live. That was his inherent baseline.

The dreams of the possibilities of man, especially in solidarity were thoughts his mind could conceive of without doubt. “Solidarity: where else can one  produce it’s substitute? This is the largest word in resources….fullest of meaning potential, all inclusive.”   This was said much in the same way his contemporary, Abraham Lincoln, felt about the equality of all  men no matter their color, race or creed.

With an optimistic nature, Whitman celebrates a single leaf of grass which, “is no less the journey work of stars.” And with these succinct depictions spoken by the man,  we can begin to taste the journey that Walt Whitman was on beginning with his birth on May 31st, 1819 through his death March 26th, 1892 and forever after.

He blew away the structured verse of bygone days. This was nurtured by his life of the many freedoms that the new world offered. The recollected highlights of his life included bathing fully naked in nature, basking in the glories of the sea and land under the sun and stars.

Walt Whitman believed himself as infinite as an artist, because he saw that he lived in his art rather than life itself alone, with no beginning and no end. He was also a complete free spirit, possibly one of the very first, since the white man arrived on the shores of the continent. Hedged up against the puritanical values of earlier times, Walt was fortunately born into a Quaker abiding family who didn’t force their views upon him. Thus, he was free to carve out his on unique religious path as he saw fit. Regarding his creativity, he believed, “In all imaginative work…there must especially come in a primal quality…the fervor of genuine spirit.”

The second of nine children, Whitman’s family had very little education and were primarily farm folk. At about ten years of age, his formal education came to an end due to financial hardship. He began to live and work in the city of Brooklyn,  learning the printing trade and teaching on and off again to help support his family.

As a result of his free-spirited even rebellious nature, he was not able to hold down a job for very long nor was he able to reside in the same place for any extended period of time. However, on the other side of the coin, he developed and was considered to be the father of free verse as seen in his poetry and philosophical diatribes. He blew away the structured verse of bygone days. This was nurtured by his life of the many freedoms that the new world offered. The recollected highlights of his life included bathing fully naked in nature, basking in the glories of the sea and land under the sun and stars. He went along his merry way making bold pronouncements for the time such as, “ One day sex will be revered in all its glory and respect that it deserves.” At six feet tall and of a burly size, he was very strong, husky and handsome to both men and women. Although he hints at having physical relations with both genders, he made sure to fully edit many secrets of his life. Who he had affairs with and what actually went on between he and his lovers would remain in the privacy of his heart and mind for all eternity.

Lastly, in part one of this biographical study, I would like to mention that Whitman set up his life in such a way so that he had none of the responsibilities that ordinary people had. He had no spouse, children or home to look after. People’s average worries and concerns did not take a foothold in his life. Instead he lived for moments of intellectual and spiritual breakthroughs and insights. Several recorded examples are bright moments of glory such as, “I swear to you; there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.” or “Every hour of the day is a perfect miracle.” Throughout his life he luxuriated in a sense of endless time, free love and rebelling against the status quo of being a family man. All of this contributed to a life lived above the fray. He aimed high as a result in his purpose on earth and that was to be an honorable protector of the arc of this nation. To protect and defend the conscience of this country as set up by the founding fathers. This was the combination of agreed upon philosophies of man’s place in the universe and the laws that will protect the truths of this land for each successive generation to come.

Across New York City, Students Meet The Writer

By Filed Under: Park Slope Lit Tagged With: ,

George O’Connor poses with 6th graders at Hamilton Grange Middle School in Harlem

Meet the Writers, which began with a single school in the spring of 2015, has so far reached 12,000 New York City  preK-8th grade public school children in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan, with a particular emphasis on Title 1 schools, where a majority of students live in low-income homes. 

Jacqueline Woodson greets middle school fans at Seth Low IS 96 in Brooklyn

Michele Weisman can remember back to a time before she became a book person. Growing up, her family preferred watching TV to turning pages. But in seventh grade at Baltimore’s Pikesville Junior High she encountered books like Animal Farm and experienced the joys of critical reading for the first time. Books became central to her long career as a graphic designer and art director for many prestigious children’s publishers including Children’s Television Workshop, Time For Kids, and Highlights for Children. “Middle school can change your direction,” Weisman says now, reflecting on how much changed for her when she began loving books. She’s made that realization her life’s mission, spending the last four years connecting 12,000 New York City schoolchildren with books and authors through Meet the Writers, Inc., the non-profit organization she founded in 2015.

In the auditorium at Hamilton Grange Middle School on West 138th Street one fall morning there’s a buzz in the air, the slightly unruly kind of noise particular when groups of tweens gather. As students pour in, each clutching a volume from the Olympians series of graphic novels about Greek mythology, they curiously eye the man on stage next to a blank sketchbook on an easel. Once they’re seated and the chatter settles to a low hum, George O’Connor, the author and illustrator of the Olympians, launches into a bravura presentation. Gesturing energetically, joking around, soliciting responses from the students, and sketching virtuosically, O’Connor quickly has the whole auditorium in the palm of his hand. Students are laughing and nodding along with his rapid-fire banter, and even the teachers, staff, and administrators standing in the back are charmed and entertained. With plain paper and a black Sharpie, O’Connor brings Greek mythology to life. After his presentation, he stays for almost two hours, talking with every student and signing every single book with a sketch of each student’s favorite god or goddess. Some more extroverted students joke around with him, while a few quieter children confide how much they also like to draw and ask to show O’Connor their work.

Weisman also works hard to choose authors in whom the students can see themselves, whether because of their background or subject matter.

The Olympians school visit is a perfect illustration of how Meet the Writers excels: Weisman works in close partnership with each school to find a writer who matches both the students and the setting. “There’s no one formula I follow,” Weisman explains. Instead, she pairs her knowledge of a school and its demographics with her extensive rolodex of writers and illustrators–painstakingly built through visits to book festivals and contacts with publishers–to make each match. She’s brought authors of all races, ages, and genders into schools; from the author of the popular Cam Jansen series, David A. Adler, to Sesame Street actress and author Sonia Manzano. Setting also dictates her planning. When middle-school students encounter a writer in an auditorium, a big personality like O’Connor goes over like gangbusters; for kindergarteners, an author may travel from classroom to classroom, speaking to small groups sitting on the rug and answering questions the children have prepared in advance. Whether discussing a sweet picture book or a challenging young adult novel, coming face-to-face with its author piques the students’ interest in a more personal way from words or pictures on the page.

For many of these students, Meet the Writers provides their first introduction to a real-life writer or artist and expands their world of role models to include the creators of books.

Illustrator Bryan Collier engages 3rd graders in the Bronx

Weisman also works hard to choose authors in whom the students can see themselves, whether because of their background or subject matter, and the writers in turn emphasize how to pursue a creative passion and turn it into a job. Authors describe their different writing styles in accessible, entertaining ways-some are planners, while others are more spontaneous- and emphasize the hard but essential work of editing. Students are fascinated not only by each book’s content, but by the life and career of the author, and often by the publishing process as well: “How much money do you make?” they ask, or “Did you choose the picture on the cover?” The authors’ generous and honest answers clearly set wheels turning in the students’ minds. Perhaps some will become writers or artists themselves, while others are sparked by thinking about the business of books for the first time. Whether students consider themselves nascent authors or not, there is value in these visits for each of them.

Meet the Writers, which began with a single school in the spring of 2015, has so far reached 12,000 New York City preK-8th grade public school children in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan, with a particular emphasis on Title 1 schools, where a majority of students live in low-income homes. It has also helped provide 4,000 signed books: one of Weisman’s main goals for the future is to be able to hand a book to every student she serves. From that first school visit in 2015, the program now has forty events scheduled for the 2019-20 school year, and Weisman expects that number to grow. Because Meet the Writers operates with extremely low overhead cost, it has relied so far on small grants and prize money, as well as the generosity of individual small donors. Weisman hopes an increase in funding will help her grow the program, not only in numbers of books but also in increasing the number of schools and students it reaches. In addition to the strong presence in elementary and middle schools, she recently began discussions with a high school, which would be Meet the Writers’ first. They are also hoping to add Staten Island and complete the mission of reaching New York students in all five boroughs. Meet the Writers is now actively looking for strategic partnerships with complementary organizations focusing on literacy and education–a recent collaboration with Read Alliance brought author/illustrator Ruth Chan to meet elementary students and their high school reading buddies. 

Ruth Chan meets 1st graders and sign books at Sunset Park School in Brooklyn

“This feels like my small way of moving the needle,” Weisman explains. It’s creative act of social activism in a climate that too often feels hostile to the needs of children and the less privileged. Meet the Writers has also been a way to distill her life’s experience, from a career focused on educational publishing, to her time volunteering with P.S. 321’s author visits, to her term as PTA co-president at Hunter College High School. Weisman found herself craving both new challenges and new meaning in her work, and the timing seemed ideal as her children approached the end of high school. “I turned fifty, started running, and wanted to reinvent and recharge myself,” Weisman says, and with Meet the Writers, she has turned that extensive energy and dedication to the service of New York City’s children. Whether meeting award-winning authors like Jacqueline Woodson or Elizabeth Acevedo, both of whom grew up in New York City themselves, or writers who’ve traveled- sometimes across the country- to speak with them, New York’s public school students are enriched by one woman’s mission: to help them find the joy of becoming book people themselves.

www.meetthewriters.org

Michele Weisman, Founder and Executive Director

Brooklyn: The City Within

By Filed Under: Park Slope Lit Tagged With: , , ,

Williamsburg, 2014 by Alex Webb

Any book with the word Brooklyn in its title is special for those of us who are fortunate enough to live here. This one has particular relevance to readers of the Park Slope Reader however not only because the couple who made it are our immediate neighbors, but because The City Within that they refer to in their title is “the green heart of the borough: Prospect Park, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Green-Wood Cemetery”.

This is, almost literally, two books in one. Rebecca Norris Webb’s photographs and words that focus on our green spaces are even printed on slightly smaller-sized pages bound like a sandwich in the center of the volume, whereas Alex Webb’s rather bigger share of the book takes him on forays across our entire borough.

  • Flatbush Ave Birthday Party
  • Bedford Stuyvesant Street Fair
  • Brooklyn Night
  • Butterfly in Park
  • Along L Line to 8 Ave

He returns repeatedly not simply to Brooklyn’s complex diversities, but to the beguiling contradictions that are reconciled here on a daily basis, or in the case of his remarkable photographs, in the blink of an eye or a camera shutter. In fact he goes out of his way to accentuate what he calls the “quotidian, yet sometimes enigmatic, world around me” in the images here. In the visual cacophony of an image captioned Williamsburg, 2014 for example, the space is chopped up by construction barriers, a lamp post, and the entrance to Bedford Avenue subway station, while it is simultaneously dragged back together by the fragments of graffiti and stickers that cover everything that has stayed still long enough to be covered in them. And then, in a weird sort of pictorial alchemy, a shirtless eighties-era muscle man pasted to the wall seems momentarily the twin of a young guy striding determinedly out of the right of the picture frame while he lifts his Nike t-shirt and scratches his toned belly.

So this is more than a book that confirms how remarkable our borough is, it is a book that makes us realize that Brooklyn is even more than we imagined.”

A few of Rebecca Norris Webb’s images are a little simpler. There is for example her gorgeous Mute Swan, though even here a strange rectangular pink glow falls on the swan’s back and makes the image somewhat enigmatic. More often she treats us to wonderful visual complexities through her use of deep spaces filled with details at different scales, some in and some out of focus. And she is a virtuoso of the bewitching reflection in photographs like Shimmering in which the illuminated ceiling of the LeFrak Center skating rink is somehow seen as though floating in a spectacular evening sky. Even if this was the only image in the book it would be well worth the cover price.

Fortunately there are more than eighty other images here, a number of which – like Shimmering ­– I cannot work out how they were created, and one or two of which – like Alex Webb’s view of Gowanus, 2016 ­– juggle fleeting reflections in an equally entertaining way. Having enjoyed this photograph will make my F train ride into Manhattan forever a little different.

Gowanus, 2016 by Alex Webb

Reflections are also present in Rebecca Norris Webb’s poems and short sections of prose: reflections of the work of other writers, of their lives and experiences, and – more obviously – of the world that is Brooklyn that she knows as well as most of us do. Sometimes the pages of text that appears in books filled with photographs are little more than negligible footnotes. That is far from the case here, and Norris Webb’s use of language is exquisite. When she describes looking down into the darkness from an airplane and “Prospect Park passes beneath like a great dark ship,” or asks “Can the rain multiply anything that’s blue?” then it is obvious that hers is a genuinely cross-disciplinary art in which, to quote Alex Webb’s brief preface, “words and pictures create places where landscape and memory, history and reverie meet.”

The recurrent delight that this book offers is the chance to see things differently. Differently to how we had seen them before, and even differently to how we imagined they were. In its pages we find a building-wide mural weirdly echoed in the Scotch tape wrapped around a telephone pole; a woman dressed as a somewhat fanciful version of a lobster while another strips down to her bathing costume; a raccoon high in the branches of a tree, its eyes glowing ghostly in the darkness; and two serious little girls dressed for the Ragamuffin Parade while behind them on the sidewalk a couple of bekilted gentlemen play the bagpipes. 

Shimmering by Rebecca Norris Webb

So this is more than a book that confirms how remarkable our borough is, it is a book that makes us realize that Brooklyn is even more than we imagined. Or perhaps for each of us our personal City Within is the mixture of what we know and what we imagine. So, to give the final words to Rebecca Norris Webb, “I wonder how many of us now – this moment in Brooklyn – find ourselves inhabiting two worlds at once?”

Get your copy of Brooklyn: The City Within by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, published by Aperture – HERE

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Writing My Way Through Early Parenthood

By Filed Under: Park Slope Lit Tagged With: , , , , ,

 

 

Armed with my iced coffee and laptop, I settled in to my regular perch at the counter of Konditori, a sunny spot with a front-row view of bustling Fifth Avenue. After a little chatter with the barista, and a little eavesdropping on the conversations of my fellow café dwellers, I turned my attention to reworking the next scene of my novel. It was how I’d spent countless mornings for years. The difference was, for the first time, I was a mother—and at one week old, my daughter was curled against my chest, all eight pounds of her secured by the complicated twists and ties of the cloth carrier I was still mastering. The coos she made in her sleep and the gentle sucks of her thumb sounded like sweet encouragements. For a couple of precious hours, I wrote.

When I was six months pregnant, I had the luck to sell my third novel, what would become Otherwise Engaged. My new editor had pages of smart suggestions, which would require a major overhaul of the manuscript. The official timeline gave me six months to implement the revisions, but I had my own deadline: my due date. Experienced moms had issued dire warnings of what life would be like with a newborn: I’d never sleep again; I wouldn’t have time to shower, never mind eat a meal or run an errand; I’d be stuck on a never-ending merry-go-round of changing, feeding, and shushing a wailing baby. Still pregnant, I couldn’t really imagine this chapter of my life that was about to unfold—I pictured it like a foreign country, or even outer space. But one thing that seemed certain is that it wouldn’t include the stretches of time, not to mention energy and focus, I needed in order to write fiction. And that meant it was a race against the clock: I’d be a writer until I became a mother.

I pride myself on my reliability and responsibility, my knack for meeting deadlines—but I didn’t meet this one. After all, the third trimester of pregnancy is a busy time. There’s birthing class and stocking up on and then learning how to use the seemingly endless list of items required to care for an infant. There’s the effort it takes to commute to and from work each day with twenty extra pounds strapped to one’s stomach, plus the actual workday. Then there’s the trying to pack in all the movies and socializing and sleeping in that I’d been assured would be a thing of the past once my baby arrived. As a result, I didn’t find the time to rewrite my novel.

When my water broke early one Monday morning, a week before my due date, I felt excited and terrified both. I also felt panicked, wondering, When am I going to finish my novel revise now?

Very quickly, this question receded into the fog of new motherhood. At first, everything was a blur, and some stretches did in fact resemble the horror stories my mom friends had shared. Other times were pure joy, and I felt I was all heart, no brain. Every intelligible thought in my head seemed to have been superseded by the bliss of having a baby.

This didn’t last. About a week after returning home from the hospital with my sweet-smelling bundle, my unfinished novel returned to me: the plot inconsistencies that needed fixing, the character motivations that needed clarifying, the conflict that needed ramping up. Even as my body was still recovering from birth, and I wasn’t yet sure what was supposed to go in the diaper bag, there I was hauling my baby and my laptop down two flights of stairs and across Park Slope to my favorite café, ordering a coffee, and getting back to work.

The novel revisions turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I’m lucky enough to work for a company with a great maternity leave policy. But I admit that beforehand, the prospect of twelve weeks of open time—without a job or any structure to my day—scared me nearly as much as the prospect of being permanently responsible for a tiny, helpless being. I’m someone who, to put it mildly, is not very good at simply existing and going with the flow. Of course, anyone who’s taken care of a baby understands something I didn’t, which is that it isn’t open time. It’s hard work—exhausting, relentless, and sometimes mind-numbing. What helped me survive those initial weeks was writing.

It was only an hour or two a day—and sometimes less, if my baby began crying, or squirming, or smelling like she needed a diaper change. Some days, after I’d been up for long spans of the night nursing and then rocking my daughter back to sleep, it was all I could do to move around a comma or two. Still, it was a daily routine. It got me dressed and out of the house. It kept me connected, however tangentially, to the world around me, and to my identity as a writer. I loved being a mother, much more than I’d anticipated I would. But it was grounding and reassuring to remind myself, day after day, that I was also still the person I’d been before becoming a mother. 

An added benefit? My writing practice made me a better mother, too. After flexing my brain to solve problems on the page, I’d leave the café feeling ready to tune back in to the very different work of motherhood. I felt more focused and joyful, and more available to my daughter when we faced the daunting task of tummy time or a third diaper change within an hour.

By the end of my maternity leave, I’d nearly finished my novel revision… but not quite. In retrospect, I wonder if that was a subconscious decision. During those chaotic early weeks of returning to my job and figuring out the working-parenting balance, I still spent stints writing at Konditori. Keeping up this routine was steadying. Eventually, I finished the revision, meeting the publisher’s deadline. I didn’t yet know that I’d go on to complete several more revisions; publishing a book, much like parenthood, is a marathon, not a sprint.

Meanwhile, my daughter started crawling and then walking. These days, she rarely sits still for more than a few minutes. So, I’ve returned to writing on my own. Weekend mornings are my husband’s father-daughter time, and my solo writing time. My daughter loves to imitate me, so if she spots my open laptop, she begins banging at its keys. Reviewing her nonsensical edits is decent entertainment, and it also makes me reminisce about editing in those early days of parenthood: As my newborn breathed softly against my chest, I’d take a break between paragraphs to stroke her hair and inhale her special scent, before returning to the screen, pressing enter, and writing on.