Sunday, December 6, 2009

2 new books about life in Queens

From the Times Ledger:

It was on the tree-lined streets of Kew Gardens that Dick Van Patten got his start as a child star who would go on to appear in hundreds of radio shows, two dozen films and seven television series, including the 1970s sitcom “Eight is Enough.”

Van Patten’s mother and longtime supporter, Josephine, would push him in a carriage through the streets of Kew Gardens and was frequently stopped by passersby who would urge her to bring her child into a modeling agency.

Van Patten describes growing up in Kew Gardens and Richmond Hill in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s in his recently published memoir “Eighty Is Not Enough.” The book’s title is a reference to both the show, in which he became known to much of the world as the sitcom’s father, and his age.

Van Patten was born in Jamaica Hospital in 1928 and grew up in Kew Gardens and Woodhaven, where his mother had lived as a teenager. In the 272-page book, he relays many of his memories from Queens, including living on the first floor of a crowded home in Woodhaven, participating in a talent contest at the Willart Theater in Woodhaven and the death of a 7-year-old friend on the Long Island Rail Road tracks near his Woodhaven home.


From LA Times:

In his latest short-story collection, "A Good Fall," Jin continues his skillful and deeply felt exploration of immigrant conflicts. He focuses on a socioeconomically diverse cast of characters mostly living or working in the Queens, N.Y., neighborhood of Flushing. They include a healthcare aide trying to fend off advances from an old man with dementia without losing her job ("A Pension Plan"), a private SAT tutor embroiled in an inadvertent love triangle with his female student and her mother ("Choice") and a professor worried that a single misspelled word on his application will doom his tenure chances ("An English Professor"). A pervasive anxiety infects these lives. For these newcomers, both relationships and jobs seem precious, precarious things, often tied to one another, sometimes hanging by a thread.

Jin depicts Flushing as an immigrant purgatory, a refuge bounded by danger. Here English is not yet the common language, deportation remains a threat and old-country obligations -- a smuggler's payoff, a sister's e-mailed demand for money to buy a high-priced foreign car -- can impede fragile economic progress.

11 comments:

Alice N. Wonderland said...

What a coincidence. I'm writing a fictional book as well. It's about the first Asian city councilman. He's from Flushing and he stands up for his community and fights developers who want to build on every square inch of his district. He takes on his corrupt colleagues and exposes them to the media. If that were not enough, he personally sees to it that the members of his community understand each other's cultures in order to promote peace and harmony. He unifies the community by holding meetings and seeing to it that peoples' concerns are taken seriously. Remember, I said it was a work of fiction!

Alexandre Dumbass said...

Alice-
Here's a suggestion for a "happy ending." The councilman becomes the champion of the people and runs for mayor against a tyrannical billionaire who has used his great wealth to steal away democracy and become the perpetual mayor until challenged by the hero councilman. The councilman's victory gives the city new life as rampant development is immediately halted. He also outs elected officials who broke the trust of the electorate and exposes the dirty underbelly of city politics. More fiction.

Anonymous said...

No big deal, but it's the Willard Theater, not "Willart" --

Auntie Invasion said...

Is it because the QBPL has a New Americans division that there are a multitude of pro-immigrant fiction books in that library system?

I'm so sick of hearing how difficult life is for immigrants. How about how difficult the Old Americans lives are? How many true Queens natives work for the QBPL? if you are an immigrant, you get a job there.

I question the ongoing onslaught of books geared for sympathy to this group. Where is the sympathy for me or people like me, Americans born in this country who are being screwed out of jobs by illegal immigrants?

Anonymous said...

"Is it because the QBPL has a New Americans division that there are a multitude of pro-immigrant fiction books in that library system?"

Few know it, but the Flushing Library has been quietly dismantling it's International Resource Center, because it was too scholarly. They'd rather have trashy crap in foreign-languages than scholarly books about other cultures. It's a shame.

Anonymous said...

Few know it, but the Flushing Library has been quietly dismantling it's International Resource Center, because it was too scholarly.

Why isn't this being "outed"?

Anonymous said...

"Why isn't this being "outed"?"

You can't criticize the library - it would be like criticizing applie pie or grandma.

Just like no one has written about the money QBPL has already wasted in expanding their Central Library in Jamaica. When the nightclub next door closed, the library spent a lot of money renovating the space so they could expand. Then, suddenly, they decided to knock it down so they can put the Children's Discovery Center. One rumor was that it was structurally unsound. Don't you hire an engineer beforehand? How much money was wasted?

Anonymous said...

You can't criticize the library - it would be like criticizing applie pie or grandma.


You don't know us very well, do you?

Moby S. said...

You can't criticize the library - it would be like criticizing applie pie or grandma.

I woulda been a grandma but my son Evan has a teenie weenie. :>(

Anonymous said...

Confirming the dismantling of the Flushing library IRC, I was unable to borrow a particular book listed in the book catalog last month because it had been sold to private book dealer.

Anonymous said...

I guess that "they" need to keep the population dumbed down. It is difficult to tweed an intelligent populace.