Next Stop: Growing Up Wild-Style in the Bronx

by Ivan Sanchez

Book Overview

Beyond the safety of New York City's news headlines, Next Stop is a train ride into the heart of the Bronx during the late eighties and early nineties at the height of the crack epidemic, a tumultuous time when hip-hop was born and money-hungry slumlords were burning down apartment buildings with tenants still inside. From one stop to the next, this gritty memoir follows Ivan Sanchez and his crew on their search for identity and an escape from poverty...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416562672
• ISBN13: 9781416562672
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

NEXT STOP: DRAMA

Next Stop is urban drama at its absolute best. A compelling read - Ivan Sanchez's story is real, raw, funny, emotional, and all too familiar with many young men and women coming of age in inner-city America. An excellent document on the "live fast and die young" generation of the 80s & 90s in what was still a very dangerous and progressively violent urban New York. Next Stop should be required reading not only for school students, but for any teen struggling with family, peer pressure, drugs, gangs, and the many pitfalls and challenges of life in the ghetto. -Koe Rodriguez

An inspirational "eye opener"

This book was trully a inspirational, motivational "eye opener" It was an excellent story that took me way back... As a teen who grew up in the bronx in the 1985-86 era who thankfully was dragged by her parents to a "better life" in florida...i was trully touched. This story made me laugh, made me cry, made my heart go out to all the youths i left behind. Who knows how my brother or I wouldve turned out had we stayed in the bronx. It makes me feel proud however... to see ivan as a latino... "rise above"... Kudos to Ivan. ~Taina Vides

Unapologetic Honesty

Next Stop is a more than a memoir. It is as if the reader is taking a look beyond the almost cartoonish expectations of what life is like living in the Bronx into a reality the readers must brace themselves to face. It is a refreshing look at a world many are unfamiliar with yet will find their own personal connections. Even amidst the almost tragic and gut-wrenching truths this book uncovers, the reader will find their own story in the lives of these true-to-life characters. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has the courage to step out of their comfort zone and experience life through the eyes of someone who at first glance you may not expect such sensitivity, passion, eloquence and heart.

fascinating but also sad memoir of life in the Bronx

NEXT STOP is a fascinating but also sad memoir of life in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx in from 1978 to the early 1990s. However unlike most memoirs looking back at a "war zone", Ivan Sanchez does not tell much about his escape. Instead he focuses on survival, a sort of social Darwinism in practice. The neighborhood is filled with crime mostly violent from professional arsonists collecting fees for torching buildings so owners can collect insurance to drug wars over who peddles where (fundamental capitalistic supply and demand). To live another day, you needed a crew to provide 360 degrees of protection for one another, but that was no guarantee. Readers will be abhorred at the violence, but more so at the way it is taken for granted as part of living in wild Bronx. Well written with plenty of heart, this is not an easy read for unlike TV this is real life; for this reviewer who grew up in the Bronx and knows the locations like Creston Ave near Fordham Rd it especially hits home. Harriet Klausner