High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing

ISBN-13: 9781642595376

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Publication Date: 01-26-2021

Pages: 304

Product Dimensions: 8.25(w) x 5.50(h) x (d)

Series: Voice of Witness

Audrey Petty is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A Ford Foundation grantee, her work has been featured in Colorlines, StoryQuarterly, and Saveur, among many others.Alex Kotlowitz is the author of There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America, which the New York Public Library selected as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century. His nonfiction stories have appeared in print, radio and film. From his documentary, The Interrupters, to his stories in The New York Times Magazine and on public radio's This American Life, he's been honored in all three mediums.

Table of Contents

Among the narrators:

DOLORES, who, at the age of eighty-two, was hastily displaced from her home in Cabrini-Green after fifty-three years and forced to leave many of her belongings behind. Dolores depicts her community’s evolution over five decades, including her leadership in resident government, and her husband’s mentoring of youth through a Drum and Bugle Corps.

DONNELL, who was initiated into gang life at the age of twelve.
A former resident of Rockwell Gardens, Donnell recounts growing up in an environment where daily life involved selling drugs, fighting rival gangs, and navigating encounters with a corrupt and often violent police force, as well as his efforts to turn his life around after incarceration.

SABRINA, whose sister was shot in the head in their Cabrini-Green apartment when she was caught in the middle of a turf-related shooting. Because ambulances refused to come to Cabrini-Green and the elevators were out of order, Sabrina’s father and her then-pregnant mother had to carry her sister down thirteen flights of stairs to rush her to the hospita