Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair ANNOTATION
With the same acute observation, humor, and compassion she brought to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Is There No Place on Earth for Me?. Sheehan tells the story of one family's passage through the child-welfare system. A searing account of poverty, addiction, and abuse which poses inescapable questions about our society.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
On October 7, 1984, in the seventh month of her pregnancy, Crystal Taylor gave birth to a son. Because Crystal's mother didn't have her own apartment, Crystal had been living temporarily with the baby's father and his parents. But what concerned the hospital case worker was Crystal herself. According to law, fourteen-year-old Crystal was too young to be discharged from the hospital on her own. Both mother and baby would have to be placed in foster care. There are nearly half a million foster children in the United States. The emotional consequences of foster care - of being moved from one home to another, from foster family to institution and back - on any child are unpredictable. Life For Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair charts a terrifying legacy of institutional abuse and neglect, shows the damage that has been inflicted on three generations of one inner-city family, and paints a haunting portrait of children growing up without childhood. Susan Sheehan has written an astonishing and harrowing account of the consequences of a mother's homelessness and drug addiction on her child and grandchild.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Reprinted from the New Yorker , this searching and graceful book limns a black family's entrenchment in the New York City foster-care system, a system which, says Sheehan, costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year. In 1984, 14-year-old Crystal Taylor and her newborn, Daquan Jr., were placed in foster care because Crystal's mother, Florence, was an itinerant drug addict. Sheehan (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Is There No Place on Earth for Me? ) tracks Crystal and Daquan Jr.'s odyssey through foster care and details Crystal's family history. A drug and alcohol abuser since grade school, Crystal witnessed her father's near-death from heroin, was sodomized by an uncle at the age of four, was sexually abused by others and was regularly beaten by Florence, herself an abused child and a product of the foster-care system who eventually placed five other children in foster care as well. Daquan Jr. was fostered by a black middle-class family while Crystal chose to live in a group home where she readily made friends but where she flunked her school courses, was arrested for possession of drugs and for shoplifting, and dated drug dealers, two of whom were murdered. In 1992, Crystal, a mail clerk at an advertising agency, finally accepted responsibility for her son and brought him to live with her in the Brooklyn apartment that she rents. (Sept.)
Library Journal
Pulitzer Prize winner Sheehan, author of Is There No Place on Earth for Me? ( LJ 5/15/82), depicts three generations of a New York inner - city family raised in foster care. We meet 14-year-old Crystal Taylor as she and her premature infant son are discharged to separate placements in 1984. Crystal's four younger siblings follow after their mother, Florence, a drug addict, who can no longer care for them. Eight years later, the family is reunited; Crystal has completed her G.E.D., and Florence has finished a treatment program; both are working, though the family is struggling along, buttressed by social service organizations. In Joelle Sanders's similar work, Before Their Time: Four Generations of Teenage Mothers (Harcourt, 1991), a family tells their story in their own words. Recommended for public libraries.-- Lucille Boone, San Jose P.L., Cal.
School Library Journal
YA-This Pulitzer Prize winning author has written a poignant and moving tale of foster care in America. Sheehan tells the story of Florence, an African American; her oldest child, Crystal; and Crystal's son, nine-year-old Daquan. Although interviews with Crystal's younger siblings and social workers are incorporated, this narrative is told mainly from Crystal's point of view. At age 14, she gave premature birth to her son. Because she was a minor and her mother was a drug addict, she and her baby were placed in two different foster homes by the state of New York. The author demonstrates how the many moves from one home to another, from one social worker to another, and from one institution to another affected this young woman and her child, and vividly shows the impact of institutional neglect and abuse on dysfunctional families. However, Crystal is a realist and a fighter and successfully takes on the battles of her mother, siblings, and son to improve their lives. This is a compelling tale written in a spare, nonjudgmental style. It's easy to read and informative.-Pat Royal, Crossland High School, Camp Springs, MD
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