My Play Ground The Bronx

My Play Ground-The Bronx: My Memoirs is the autobiography of Anthony F. Marano, a baby boomer born and raised in New York City who shares his poignant recollections of the good times including long-forgotten television shows, street games, amusement parks, movies, music, and much more. Marano grew up during the 1940s in Country Club Spencer Estates in the midst of the Bronx as a member of a group of boys fondly nicknamed "the Four Amigos." Marano's brother Frank, their next-door neighbor Willie Jr., and their friend John, also known as Butchie, were thick as thieves during both good times and bad. Marano begins retelling his life story with chapters about his rambunctious childhood that include entertaining tales about cap guns with ammunition that could be purchased at any candy store; his Remington truck bike, black with chrome trim, found next to the Christmas tree in 1956; and his first job as a soda jerk. This delightful collection of anecdotes will spark a desire in baby boomers everywhere to reflect warmheartedly on the joys of their own childhoods, their old neighborhoods, and the young friends who were once such an important part of their young lives.

Delightful memoirs of a girl growing up in the Bronx, between the years 1938-1950's, by Tina O'Leary

This volume of fourteen interviews covers the prolific and rich career of author Jerome Charyn (b. 1937). Four of the interviews appear in English for the first time, and two interviews appear here in print for the first time as well. As one of his autobiographical volumes claims, Jerome Charyn is a “Bronx Boy,” a child born from immigrant parents who went through Ellis Island in the 1920s like so many other travelers without luggage, a “little werewolf” who grew up on his own in the chaos of the Bronx ghetto. “I think I was defined by two things: World War II and the movies.” His work remains deeply marked by this childhood largely forgotten by the American Dream. If Charyn has spent much of his life in Paris, he has paradoxically never left the Bronx: “‘El Bronx’ is there inside my head, and I revisit it the way Hemingway would fish the Big Two-Hearted River in his dreams.” His whole work is a long attempt at evoking his own history and celebrating his lifelong marveling at the power of language—“our second skin”—as well as his deep, unflinching belief in the promises of fiction. Since 1964, Charyn has published more than fifty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction and including short stories; very popular crime novels; graphic novels cowritten with European artists; essays on American culture and cinema as well as on New York; autobiography; and biography—an ever-changing production that has made it difficult for critics to classify him. And yet in many ways Charyn's writing thrives on constant currents: the words “voice,” “song,” “undersong,” or “rhythm” return frequently in his interviews as he explains what literature is to him and ceaselessly asserts that he is trying “to find a music for a musicless world,” a language for “people who cannot speak.”

Interviews with ex-members of the New York street gang made famous in the 1960s film "The Wanderers."

Community activist Carolyn McLaughlin takes us on a journey of the South Bronx through the eyes of its community members. Facing burned-out neighborhoods of the 1970s, the community fought back. McLaughlin illustrates the spirit of the community in creating a vibrant, diverse culture and its decades-long commitment to develop nonprofit housing and social-services, and to advocate for better education, health care, and a healthier environment. For the South Bronx to remain a safe haven for poor families, maintaining affordable housing is the central—but most challenging—task. South Bronx Battles is the comeback story of a community that was once in crisis but now serves as a beacon for other cities to rebuild, while keeping their neighborhoods affordable.

On a rainy day in May 1988, a lowland gorilla named Willie B. stepped outdoors for the first time in twenty-seven years, into a new landscape immersion exhibit. Born in Africa, Willie B. had been captured by an animal collector and sold to a zoo. During the decades he spent in a cage, zoos stopped collecting animals from the wild and Americans changed the ways they wished to view animals in the zoo. Zoos developed new displays to simulate landscapes like the Amazon River basin and African forests. Exhibits similar to animals' natural habitats began to replace old-fashioned animal houses. But such displays are only the most recent effort of zoos to present their audiences with an authentic experience of nature. Since the first zoological park opened in the United States in Philadelphia in 1874, zoos have promised their visitors a journey into the natural world. And for more than a century they have been popular places for education and recreation: every year more than 130 million Americans go to zoos to look at the animals and enjoy a day outdoors. The first book-length history of American zoos, Animal Attractions examines the meaning of nature in the city by looking at the ways zoos have assembled and displayed their animal collections. Situated literally and culturally in the American middle landscape, zoos are concrete expressions of longstanding tensions between wildness and civilization, science and popular culture, education and entertainment. In their efforts to promote nature appreciation, they reveal much about how our culture envisions the natural world and the human place in it and how these ideas have changed.

Never underestimate the importance of a playground such as 4th Street (Mount Vernon, New York). Or an institution, such as a Boys Club & Girls Club, or a Community Center, in its ability to knit people together. No matter where you go in this life you take a piece of your community with you. One Love.