Grand Central Winter: Stories From the Street FROM THE PUBLISHER
With humane wisdom and a biting wit, Lee Stringer chronicles the unraveling of his seemingly secure existence as a marketing executive, and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York City. Whether he is portraying "God's corner," as he calls 42nd Street, or his friend Suzi, a hooker and "past-due tourist" whose infant he sometimes baby-sits; whether he recounts taking shelter underneath Grand Central by night and collecting cans by day, or making a living hawking Street News on the subway, Lee Stringer conveys the vitality and complexity of a down-and-out life. Rich with small acts of kindness, humor, and even heroism amid violence and desperation, Grand Central Winter offers a touching portrait of our shared humanity.
SYNOPSIS
A memoir written as a series of essays on topics such as poverty, homelessness, racism, family, urban violence, and drug addiction.
FROM THE CRITICS
NY Times Book Review
Like Dorothy Parker cradling a martini, he makes no apologies...the prose lengthens out into easy strides, the storytelling is sound and the characters fresh...the portraits etched out of a rock of crack cocaine.
Bob Blaisdell
Stringer is engaging, funny and informative and has a wonderfully conversational voice, unaffected, occasionally poetic, modest and pleasant. Too conscious and artistic to demand our attention or understanding, he creates it. . . . In spite of the occasional editing lapses, all the stories are vivid and complete. . . Grand Central Winter probably will become anthologized not only as lucid documentary history of homelessness in America, but as first-rate literature. -- Quarterly Black Review
Publishers Weekly
"In New York City," writes the author, "there are three centers for people living on the street: Central Park, Grand Central Terminal, and Central Booking." And in this candid, sad, yet upbeat memoir we visit them all. Stringer once co-owned a graphic-design company, but with the death of his partner and his substance abuse found himself evicted from his apartment and camping in Grand Central Terminal. We see what life is like on the street and how the homeless search for shoes in a bureaucratic city agency. In one shelter we see hams, turkeys and other roasts going into the kitchen, but only fried salami is served. We witness homeless being rousted by cops for criminal trespass for sleeping in Grand Central, then learn that often the police do this only at the end of their shifts in order to collect overtime. The author relates the embarrassment of meeting an old business colleague while collecting cans for their five-cent redemption fee; how he rescued a coked-up businessman from muggers; and how the authorities ruthlessly cracked down on the homeless to move them out of Grand Central. Street News, the newspaper of the homeless, helps get him back on his feet, first by selling it, then by editing and writing for it. From stories about flim-flamming clerics prying on the homeless, to the streetwise Romeo who wants to make the prostitute mother of his child an "honest woman" ("I can't believe it, [she] even charged me to go to bed with her on our honeymoon night"), to the manipulations of being on the Geraldo show, Stringer possesses a sharp eye for the street and the rich, sagacious talent of a storyteller.
Library Journal
This autobiographical account of homelessness and crack addiction rambles engagingly among the key locations of New York City's Grand Central Station, Central Park, and Central Booking. Written by a former editor and columnist for Street News, a newspaper produced by New York City's homeless, the book gives full humanity to its troubled characters and homes in on the motivations, strategies, and relationships of people surviving on the streets. The power of each discrete narrative compensates for a disjointed overall structure. The biggest gap is a lack of attention to the dynamics of Stringer's transition to sobriety. In pivoting the center of morality away from the world of "working stiffs," Stringer challenges the taken-for-granted perspective on the problems of urban poverty. -- Paula Dempsey, DePaul University Library, Chicago
--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois University Library, Carbondale, Illinois
--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois University Library, Carbondale, Illinois
--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois University Library, Carbondale, Illinois
--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois University Library, Carbondale, Illinois
--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois University Library, Carbondale, Illinois
--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois University Library, Carbondale, Illinois
--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois University Library, Carbondale, Illinois
San Francisco Chronicle
We tend to forget the simple elements of the human spirit -- love, pride, pity, compassion, dignity, hatred, longing. . . .It is the confrontation of these contradictory human elments that makes Grand Central Winter by Lee Stringer such a provocative and haunting memoir.Read all 6 "From The Critics" >
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
A beguiling and seductive book. It shows us that writers are born, not made. — Kurt Vonnegut
'I wanted to put flesh and bones on what they call the issue of homelessness, but not write about it as an issue. . . .I wanted a book about the '80s, when a lot of people were fleeing a deepening sense of despair, not just the poor.' — Lee Stringer
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