In Growing up Greenpoint, Tommy Carbone captures what it was like to be a kid during the 1970s and 80s in Brooklyn.This funny, and sometimes emotional, memoir follows the years Tommy was educated not only in the classrooms of St. Stan’s, but on the streets of Greenpoint.It was there, playing street games with friends, being cornered by muggers, playing kissing games with the girls, spending time … playing kissing games with the girls, spending time with family, and constantly seeking out the best snack foods in the neighborhood, where Tommy learned a lot about life; although he may not have known it at the time.
A simple conversation, years later, about the New York City Blackout of 1977 sparks Tommy to recall his youth in the city he loved. His stories will bring you into the action of what it was like to dodge cars during a ballgame, to take a hike to another borough in search of a particular burger, to the hours spent playing pinball in a corner candy store, and how special it was to build traditions with three generations of Polish and Italian relatives in Brooklyn’s garden spot.
The vivid descriptions of his antics of what it was like to grow up during those years will transport you to the sounds and smells of living in the city during those trying years.
Reading this book, you’ll be entertained, and at the same time, you may shake your head wondering how Tommy ever survived – Growing up in Greenpoint.
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Growing up in Greenpoint is guaranteed to stimulate warm memories in readers who, like me, were brought up in an age when children were encouraged to develop the competence to confront and vanquish the thousands of tiny dangers that life throws at us as throughout childhood. This is Tommy Carbone’s story of growing up in a Polish/Italian neighbourhood of Brookline in the 1970s. Multi-generation family groups were the norm, children played in the streets, families cooked meals and ate together, the young developed life-long friendships, discipline and self-control were prized, and block parties were an annual highlight.
Tommy Carbone offers a clear-headed and affectionate look back at his childhood in the heart of his family, friends and school with heart-felt affection. He recounts his stories with enormous affection without either romanticising the past or tainting the pleasant, often funny and always meaningful memories with exaggerated nostalgia. It is clear that he greatly values his upbringing in Greenpoint and, just as his parents intended him to, learned the need and developed the means to move on.
Along with the adversities and hardships experienced at that time – inevitably relative — the author remembers the warmth of the neighbourhood, how its members supported one another and how little it took to bring them the humour and enjoyment that gave their lives meaning.
The narrative is skillfully woven together in a series of scenes covering a score of years and introducing a series of unforgettable characters who appear and disappear, offering the reader familiarity and a comfortable rhythm.
Tommy Carbone writes with such feeling and warmth that I was prompted to find Greenpoint on Google maps so that accompany him the park, the Avenue, to school, to the ice-rink and the donut shop that, by the way, pops up as the Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop.
This is a book that ends on as alluring a note as it starts and delighted me throughout.
, as is encouraged today, to avoid them and as a consequence defer true adulthood for decades / remain for an unreasonably extended period coddled by overconcerned parents and an over-protective state.
Growing up at Greenpoint must be different today. This is a story of how the young developed the competence to manage their world at a time when challenges were seen as obstacles you had to learn to overcome and not, as today, to be circumvented/ avoided or protected from.
Is a clear-headed and affectionate look back at the author’s childhood
It is observed with affection without the contamination of nostalgia.
Though the author grew up in the restricted circumstances that today we like to describe as poverty, the author shows the dignity of spirit of the people in the neighborhood as they work, live, love and bring up their children conscious that the American dream can be achieves through parsimony, hard work, personal effort and striving and an eye constantly on the goal.
He describes a neighborhood and the human and physical ties that bind it together. How experiences of weather, winter and catastrophes like a blackout can be weathered and overcome by resourcefulness and the lack of self-pity.
Tommy Carbone writes so graphically and affectionately about Greenpoint that I just had to look it up on Goggle maps – and finding the locations he mentions in the book including Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop X Y Z enhances the pleasure of reading his book.
This book is a lot of fun. Carbone experienced some pretty major events in the life of New York City, including the blackout in 1977 and a fairly significant blizzard in 1978. While these were stressful events for the adults who had to deal with all of the logistical issues, they were actually quite the adventure for the kids in the author’s neighborhood. Carbone’s stories are funny and full of heart, and he brings his childhood to life in vivid detail. While my own childhood was very different, I had no difficulty picturing the events he writes about, and I enjoyed finding the places where our experiences intersected despite the differences.