58. Lenders and Landlords:

A Guide to Tenant Organizing in Financially Distressed Housing

Northwest Bronx Community Clergy Coalition Staf,New York Community Service Society Staff,Nick Thorkelson (Illustrator) / Paperback / Community Service Society of New York / January 1996

ABOUT THE BOOK

Synopsis
This is a "how to" manual for tenants and housing advocates looking for practical ways to ensure that rental housing is properly maintained by owners and by the lenders that finance them. The following chapter headings help demonstrate that this is a practical down-to-earth, step-by-step manual: Why Organize; First Steps in Getting Organized; How to Research Your Building's Ownership and Finances; Communicating with the Landlord. Along with the hard-hitting practicalities, there are success stories to prove that this is an approach that works.

Quotes
Juan Gonzalez, Columnist, The New York Daily News

Lenders and Landlords is a valuable resource for residents and community organizations struggling to preserve distressed housing and prevent community abandonment. It is also a solid information source for anyone dealing with housing issues in New York City. In issuing this guide, CSS and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition have performed a major public service. —Juan Gonzalez

61. Memories of Clason Point

Kelly Sonnenfeld / Hardcover / N A L / February 1998

ABOUT THE BOOK

Annotation
The author describes the life of her Jewish family and her memories of her father in the Clason Point neighborhood of the Bronx, particularly during the difficult days of the Depression.

From The Publisher
An engaging memoir of growing up as a bootleggeræs daughter in the Bronx Here is an unusually evocative picture of family life during the Depression that transports the reader back through time with sensual imagery, dialogue, and minutely descriptive detail. Kelly SonnenfeldÆs extraordinary recall has allowed her to re-create the lively scenes, pastimes, and characters of her own childhood, all centered on one block in the famous multi-ethnic Bronx neighborhood of Clason Point. From the Hooverville camps of squatters, homeless, and unemployed to an endless succession of boarders and stray dogs, a caravan of unforgettable faces and personalities travels through young KellyÆs life. But most memorable of all are the looming figures of her own people: her regally proud maternal grandmother, who will buy her grandchildren fancy, starched dresses before putting food on their table; her anxious but granite-willed mother; her endearingly optimistic father, whose adventures in bootlegging bring the family close to peril on several occasions and eventually propel him from the pocket of an influential judge to prison on Rikers Island. For fans of Depression Era and gangster lore, for readers of any age who love losing themselves in another time and place, this memoir is a remarkable journey to one of the most colorful destinations in American history.

62. The Miracle of Intervale Avenue:

The Story of a Jewish Congregation in the South Bronx

Jack Kugelmass / Paperback / Columbia University Press / February 1996

ABOUT THE BOOK

From The Publisher
Located in the ravaged urban landscape of the South Bronx, the Intervale Jewish Center is the last synagogue still in regular use in a rapidly changing neighborhood. This unique congregation represents the struggle of individuals to maintain their dignity, independence, and faith over the years. In The Miracle of Intervale Avenue, Jack Kugelmass tells the inspiring story of a community that continues to see the area as its own, as a place they steadfastly refuse to abandon despite a major shift in the ethnic demography of the South Bronx and an increase in violent crime. The Miracle of Intervale Avenue is the story of Moishe Sacks, the Intervale Jewish Center's charismatic leader, acting rabbi, master baker, and storyteller. But it is also the larger story of a small community of primarily elderly Jews and of the human quest for meaning in the face of death. A classic ethnography of American Jewish life, The Miracle of Intervale Avenue has now been brought up to date. In a new closing chapter and epilogue, Kugelmass shows how the congregation has adapted to the radical changes in the neighborhood, bringing closure to this poignant work. Now with 38 photographs of the community over the years, the book covers the slow economic resurgence of the South Bronx and discusses the revitalizing effect of the congregation's new members, including blacks and Latinos.

64. My Life as a List :
207 Things about My Bronx Childhood

Linda Rosenkrantz,Linda Rosenkranz / Hardcover / Crown Publishing Group / February 1999

ABOUT THE BOOK

From The Publisher
Before I was born, my mother had decided to name me either Laurel or Lydia, names that appealed to her artistic temperament. But then somehow she was convinced by my father's sisters to make me a lackluster Ruth, in honor of their recently deceased mother, Rose. And so my birth certificate read Ruth Leila, a name I was never called, by my mother, either of my father's sisters or anyone else. So begins the life list of Linda Rosenkrantz, 207 random recollections of her first twelve years that, together, comprise one of the year's most unexpected and delightfully offbeat memoirs. Rich with the sights, sounds, and smells of her sheltered childhood in a Jewish enclave of the Bronx, My Life as a List re-creates the urban experience of American Jews in the years surrounding World War II. The author writes with wry affection of family and friends, of grievances harbored and accomplishments savored, all recalled with the laser particularity of a child's eye. Rosenkrantz's unerring attention to detail imbues these childhood impressions with remarkable clarity. Telling specifics of her girlhood are interwoven with darker undertones of war to lucidly recall the tenuous balance between day-to-day life and wartime sacrifices. Against this background, Rosenkrantz offers humorous anecdotes, touching reminiscences, and lively portraits of her family, friends, and neighbors and period photographs and ephemera from the author's own collection bring her colorful cast of characters even more vividly to life.

65. The Narrowback

Michael S. Ledwidge / Hardcover / Grove/Atlantic, Inc. / August 1998

ABOUT THE BOOK

Synopsis
A gang of Bronx-born Irish "narrowbacks" led by ex-con and wannabe artist Tom Farrell pull off a daring robbery at a tony Manhattan hotel, only to run afoul of the IRA, the FBI, and members of the Albanian mob.

From The Publisher
Thirty-year-old Tom Farrell was raised in the working-class Irish neighborhoods of the Bronx. A graduate of the school of hard knocks, Farrell has channeled his street-smart intelligence into selling guns on the black market. Just out of jail, he gets a job across the street from a ritzy Midtown hotel - which inspires him to execute the perfect heist. But when one of his gang of thugs tries to take more than his share of the loot, and ends up in the Harlem River, the trouble begins - the deceased was a favorite operative of the Bronx chapter of the IRA. Then, trying to fence the goods, Farrell draws the ire of the Albanian mob by disrespecting its godfather. Shots break out as Farrell's gang is toasting its success, and soon he is lost in the underworld of New York City after midnight, not sure who has been killed, who has survived, and who will claim the money. Tom Farrell is hungry and haunted, pursued not only by terrorists and murderers but by his past and his vices - the impact of an unbearably hard upbringing and even harder luck.

68. On a Roll:

From Zero to Millions or How a Kid From the Bronx Started wth Hot Dogs and Wound Up Making a Fortune
Howard Jonas / Hardcover / Viking Penguin / June 1998

ABOUT THE BOOK

From The Publisher
You've never met a multimillionaire like Howard Jonas. An enterprising kid from the Bronx, Howard had one simple - but smart - idea that revolutionized international telecommunications. He pioneered what is now an over-a-billion-dollar-a-year industry, successfully fought off AT&Ts aggressive attempts to pull the plug on his operation - then took his own start-up company public, to net over $100 million for himself. And it all began with a hot dog stand, as Jones relates in this effervescent account of how he became the millionaire next door. From hot dogs Howard moved on to travel brochure distribution, business-to-business directories, mail-order bonsai Christmas trees, and soon ran one of the country's largest direct mail businesses out of his dorm room at Harvard. When one of his employees moved overseas, he backed into the international telephone call-back business - and changed the face of worldwide telecommunications by saving people millions of dollars in international phone calls (and making a small fortune for himself).

69. Organizing the South Bronx

Jim R. Rooney,Foreword by Nathan Glazer / Hardcover / State University of New York Press / November 1994

ABOUT THE BOOK

From The Publisher
This is a story of heroic and articulate individuals who were able to defy overwhelming odds and build affordable housing in the South Bronx. it is about the process of teaching citizens in a low-income neighborhood how to participate in public life.

Reviews
From Booknews
A study of the process by which the residents of an impoverished urban neighborhood were educated and organized to fight the city government for vacant land and build low-cost, owner-occupied housing. Such organizing, mainly working through traditional churches, is a rapidly growing phenomena in the US and has close analogies throughout Latin America. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

70. Organizing the South Bronx

Jim R. Rooney,Foreword by Nathan Glazer / Paperback / State University of New York Press / November 1994

ABOUT THE BOOK - above

71. Padre Nuestro Que TE Escondes En El Cielo:

De San Anton Al Bronx
Armando Pacheco-Matos,Bomexi Iztaccihuatl (Editor) / Paperback / August 1999

ABOUT THE BOOK

Synopsis
The poetry of Pacheco-Matos touches different topics: politics, social problems, the status of Puerto Rico, and love.

Reviews
From El Batu Magazine
Pacheco-Matos isn't afraid to open his inner thoughts to the people. The people have a new, clear, and powerful voice.

74. The Ryer Avenue Story

Dorothy Uhnak,John Durbin (Reader) / Hardcover / Macmillan Library Reference / June 1993

ABOUT THE BOOK

Annotation
Bestselling author and ex-NYPD detective Dorothy Uhnak returns with a gripping novel that reaches beyond murder. On a winter night in 1935 in a Bronx neighborhood, a man in the street is struck dead by a blow from a shovel. Six children flee from the scene, and the father of one is later executed for the crime. Four decades later, now grown, the six witnesses gather . . . . Martin's.

75. Sacred Lips of the Bronx

Douglas Sadownick / Paperback / St. Martin's Press, Inc. / May 1995

ABOUT THE BOOK

From The Publisher
Taking the gay novel into totally uncharted terrain, Sacred Lips of the Bronx explores AIDS activism, Jewish folklore, kinky sex, the California New Age, and the streets of the Bronx. The story centers around Mikey and Robert, a young bohemian couple in post-riot Los Angeles whose open marriage is souring. As Mikey's whole world collapses, his past - led by his dead grandmother - rushes in to fill the void of the present. Frieda, as insistent in death as in life, compels him to remember the Bronx of his youth, his first love with a Puerto Rican teenager, and his passion for his ancient culture. These memories force Mikey to reckon with the reality behind AIDS and the millennium-tinged emptiness he feels. By turns funny and elegiac, Sacred Lips of the Bronx is a comic masterpiece set during a time of death and disarray.