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Sleepaway School
Like his brother before him, Stringer was surrendered to foster care, shortly after birth, by his unwed and underemployed mothera common practice for unmarried women in mid-century America. Less common was that she returned six years later to reclaim her children. Rather than leading to a happy ending, though, this is where Stringer’s story begins. The clash of being poor and black in an affluent, largely white New York suburb begins to foment pain and rage which erupts, more often than not, when he is at school. One violent episode results in his expulsion from the sixth grade and his subsequent three-year stint at Hawthorne, the “sleepaway school” of the title...
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Like Shaking Hands with God
The setting was a bookstore in New York City, the date Thursday, October 1, 1998. Before a crowd of several hundred, Vonnegut and Stringer ruminated on humanity, writing, salvation, art, and the struggle and joy of living from day to day. As Vonnegut would say, "It was a magical evening."
A book for Vonnegut fans, Stringer fans, and anyone interested in why the simple act of writing can be more important than the amount of memory in our computers...
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Grand Central Winter
Two events rise over Grand Central Winter like sentinels: Stringer's discovery of crack cocaine and his catching the writing bug. Between these two very different yet oddly similar activities, Lee's life unwound itself, during the 1980s, and took the shape of an odyssey, an epic struggle to find meaning and happiness in arid times. He eventually beat the first addiction with help from a treatment program. The second addiction, writing, has hold of him still...
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