This book is about my journey from brokenness to wholeness as a child. I survived physical and sexual abuse. As I got older I found comfort in the bottle. I became a drunk I made the rounds of the hospitals, detox, and the jails. I rode with motorcycle gangs. I hit bottom when I thought about suicide. I have gotten better in 12 step recovery meetings. I allowed God and the 12 steps to change me into a sober, loving, and gentle person. I hope my book will help others.

The Bronx street kid becomes a man I am 55 sober over 11 years- my life continues to change as i grow up. I have allowed GOD to transform my pain and shame into a message. I didnt ask to get raped by a strange man when I was 7. I had no power to stop it. I remained silent and sick for over 40 years. I broke the silence, I am better. Now I share my trials and growth. I hope my book helps others face their pain. The darkness went away when I turned on the light. The universal light is love, GOD is love.

Funny and poignant memories of growing up Italian in the Bronx in the '50s and '60s.

this book is about my journey from brokenness to wholeness as a child i survived physical and sexual abuse as i got older i found comfort in the bottle i became a drunk i made the rounds of the hospitals, detox, and the jails i rode with motorcycle gangs i hit bottom when i thought about suicide i have gotten better in 12 step recovery meetings i allowed GOD and the 12 steps to change me into a sober, loveing, and gentle person i hope my book will help others

"A down-to-earth, inspiring book about the American promise fulfilled." —President Bill Clinton "Fascinating . . . . Made me wish I had been born in the Bronx." —Barbara Walters A touching and provocative collection of memories that evoke the history of one of America's most influential boroughs—the Bronx—through some of its many success stories The vivid oral histories in Arlene Alda's Just Kids from the Bronx reveal what it was like to grow up in the place that bred the influencers in just about every field of endeavor today. The Bronx is where Michael Kay, the New York Yankees' play-by-play broadcaster, first experienced baseball, where J. Crew's CEO Millard (Mickey) Drexler found his ambition, where Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dava Sobel fell in love with science early on and where music-making inspired hip hop's Grandmaster Melle Mel to change the world of music forever. The parks, the pick-up games, the tough and tender mothers, the politics, the gangs, the food—for people who grew up in the Bronx, childhood recollections are fresh. Arlene Alda's own Bronx memories were a jumping-off point from which to reminisce with a nun, a police officer, an urban planner, and with Al Pacino, Mary Higgins Clark, Carl Reiner, Colin Powell, Maira Kalman, Bobby Bonilla, and many other leading artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs—experiences spanning six decades of Bronx living. Alda then arranged these pieces of the past, from looking for violets along the banks of the Bronx River to the wake-up calls from teachers who recognized potential, into one great collective story, a film-like portrait of the Bronx from the early twentieth century until today.

Street outreach workers comb public places such as parks, vacant lots, and abandoned waterfronts to search for young people who are living out in public spaces, if not always in the public eye. Street Kids opens a window to the largely hidden world of street youth, drawing on their detailed and compelling narratives to give new insight into the experiences of youth homelessness and youth outreach. Kristina Gibson argues that the enforcement of quality of life ordinances in New York City has spurred hyper-mobility amongst the city’s street youth population and has serious implications for social work with homeless youth. Youth in motion have become socially invisible and marginalized from public spaces where social workers traditionally contact them, jeopardizing their access to the already limited opportunities to escape street life. The culmination of a multi-year ethnographic investigation into the lives of street outreach workers and ‘their kids’ on the streets of New York City, Street Kids illustrates the critical role that public space regulations and policing play in shaping the experience of youth homelessness and the effectiveness of street outreach.

"A photographic essay offering an unflinching look at boys growing up on the mean streets of the Bronx"--