The Brooklyn Reader: 30 Writers Celebrate America's Favorite Borough

by Andrea Wyatt, Alice Leccese Powers, Julia Heaberlin

Book Overview

From Coney Island to the Heights, from the 1850s to the present, here is the essence of Brooklyn. This diverse anthology includes the work of such notables as Truman Capote, Cristina Garcia, Spike Lee, William Styron, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Wolfe. "Testaments to the mythic place Brooklyn was, and in many ways continues to be."--New YorkDaily News.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517591340
• ISBN13: 9780517591345
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 287 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

fawgeddabowdit!

To try to capture the rhythms and rumbles, slang and swagger of Brooklyn in one paperbound volume would seem to be an admirable but ultimately futile undertaking. However, THE BROOKLYN READER makes a great attempt, and as successful as one as possible. The diverse classes, ethnic groups, and races are represented well here. Most of the eras are also well-established. Every piece in this anthology was written after the Civil War, when Brooklyn was a city on its own. And most of the selections are from the 20th Century when Brooklyn became a borough of Greater New York. While I wish there was something to represent the borough during the Revloutionary era, I realize the pickings are slim and not always interesting.The prose pieces range from fiction (Betty Smith, Cristina Garcia, William Styron, etc.) to the reflective essay (Paule Marshall, Shirley Chisolm, etc.) to notes on making a film (Spike Lee). The styles within these pieces are varied and make for fascinating reading. What's interesting is the smattering of poetry; most of the poems focus on getting to and from Manhattan. Harte Crane's "The Bridge", Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", and Vladmir Mayakovski's "Brooklyn Bridge" concern themselves with Brooklyn's symbiotic relationship to its more famous (and not always for the right reasons) sister city across the East River.When I finished this book, I had as good an understanding of my own hometown, as I would have from a nonfiction text. But the enjoyment along the way of these author's voices made the learning experience all the more effective. Rocco DormarunnoAuthor of The Five Points Concluded--A Novel

A great collection!

If you've never been to Brooklyn you'll have a wonderful time exploring the short stories of some of the most legendary writers in American literature. It's a collection of writers who capture a sense of place, spirit, and culture and do it beautifully. Of course, in any anthology, some stories and writers appeal to each reader moreso than others.As a Brooklyn resident, I found this to be a wonderful collection of 30 perspectives of 30 different aspects of life in Brooklyn. Some aspects are long gone and it's wonderful to catch a glimpse, but surprisingly much of the Brooklynese still rings true. The stories capture the settings, the many cultures which landed and had to mix, and still try to work out the cultural boundaries, the languages and even, of course, the legendary Brooklyn accent er...(da Brukln axe sent)!