Flying over 96th Street: Memoir of an East Harlem White Boy - Hardcover

Webber, Thomas L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743247507 ISBN 13: 9780743247504

Publisher: Scribner, 2004

Synopsis

Tommy Webber is nine years old when his father, a founding minister of the East Harlem Protestant Parish, moves the family of six from a spacious apartment in an ivy-covered Gothic-style seminary on New York City's Upper West Side to a small one in a massive public-housing project on East 102nd Street. But it isn't the size of the apartment, the architecture of the building, or the unfamiliar streets that make the new surroundings feel so strange. While Tommy's old neighborhood was overwhelmingly middle class and white, El Barrio is poor and predominantly black and Puerto Rican. In Washington Houses, a complex of over 1,500 apartments, the Webbers are now one of only a small handful of white families.
Set during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Flying over 96th Street: Memoir of an East Harlem White Boy is the story of one boy's struggle with race, poverty, and identity in a city - and a country - grappling with the same issues. Tommy's classmates at the exclusive Collegiate School for Boys, which he attends on scholarship, dare not venture above the city's Maxon-Dixon Line of 96th Street into the unknown territory of muggers, gangs, and junkies. Tommy, however, slowly makes new friends on the local basketball courts and at church, and discovers a different East Harlem, one where an exuberant human spirit hides within the oppressive projects and drab tenements, fighting to break through the cracked sidewalks. Webber interweaves the nation's growing Civil Rights movement - from watching on television the forced integration of Little Rock's Central High School to participating in the famous 1963 March on Washington - with the subtler, more immediate changes he observes in the lives of his friends and neighbors.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas L. Webber is the founder and Superintendent/Executive Director of Edwin Gould Academy, a coeducational, residential treatment school for adolescents in the foster care and juvenile justice systems.

From the Inside Flap

"This is an exemplary coming-of-age memoir....In eloquent, moving language...Webber details, with pathos and humor, how he slowly adjusted to his new circumstances and found friendship and love in one of the poorest areas of the city." -- Publishers Weekly

"Bravo to Tom Webber for such a beautifully written and sensitive reflection on his boyhood as a white kid growing up in black and brown Spanish Harlem in the 1950s and 1960s. His unique vantage point helps debunk commonly held stereotypes about Spanish Harlem, its people, youth, and race relations in general, and strengthens our connections to one another through an understanding of our shared history. Webber has created a blend of heartfelt innocence, historical document, and social commentary in this warm and multitextured memoir. Webber's sincerity, optimism, and honest insights are refreshingly uplifting." -- Piri Thomas, author of Down These Mean Streets

"Flying over 96th Street is not the usual story of dreary slum life, but a tough, riveting, and honest account of a white minister's son who grew up in East Harlem. A story that grips you and keeps you reading to the last page, it is a classic memoir in the mold of Angela's Ashes and Notes of a Native Son." -- Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the Fifties

"Diversity may be the hardest thing for society to live with, and the most dangerous thing to be without. Slowly but surely Tommy Webber approaches the goal that should be ours as well -- to celebrate rather than to fear our differences. This is a wonderful, poignant, funny, and most readable book. I loved it." -- William Sloane Coffin, author of Credo and The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality

"In this delightful book, Thomas L. Webber returns the memoir to its sacred and foundational purpose: to witness. As Webber narrates his coming-of-age in a style that is emotionally fluent and intellectually perceptive, we learn firsthand what it was like to grow up a young white boy above 96th Street in 1960s New York as the country was being rocked by the Civil Rights movement. A song of innocence and experience, Flying over 96th Street informs as it entertains -- as all great memoirs do." -- Katy Lederer, author of Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers

"It takes just the right mix of hard-boiled professionalism, holy boldness, and tender loving care to finally arrive at what we call humanity when dealing with the lives of other people. This book is the story of one dedicated man's inspired attempt to make the journey." -- Ossie Davis, actor, writer, producer, and director

"Tom Webber had the most interesting childhood of any white person I know. This is the fascinating, wonderfully observed story of his experiences growing up in East Harlem." -- Dave Barry, author and humor columnist for The Miami Herald

"A powerful and compelling story. A young boy lives, learns, and grows-almost against his will-into a wonderful adult, devoting his life to making the world a little bit better. Beautifully written. Hard to put down." -- Roger Fisher Professor emeritus, Harvard Law School, and co-author of Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Reviews

This is an exemplary coming-of-age memoir written by a white man (Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community, 1831-1865) who, as an eight year-old boy, in 1957, moved with his parents and siblings from a comfortable apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side to a public housing project in East Harlem. The relocation came as a result of a "direct call from God" received by Webber's father, a minister who helped found the East Harlem Protestant Parish and wanted to live where he worked. Bitterly opposed to the move at first, Webber details, with pathos and humor, how he slowly adjusted to his new circumstances and found friendship and love in one of the poorest areas of the city. A scholarship student at the all-white Collegiate School for Boys, Webber was often torn between earlier ties to wealthy classmates who never ventured above 96th Street and the working-class African-American and Puerto Rican friends he slowly began to make. In eloquent, moving language, he describes how he overcame an initial fear of the streets; his ultimately successful tries at playing basketball in the East Harlem playground, as the only white boy on the courts; and his friendship with Danny, a streetwise African-American, who yearned to be in show business. (When Danny revealed that he is gay, their friendship remained intact.) The author's parents were deeply committed to the Civil Rights movement, and there is a moving account of their participation in the 1963 March on Washington. Webber's respect for his father increased as he matured, as he realized that "Dad is the man who lives closest to the ideals and principles he espouses." The author still lives and works in East Harlem at a residential treatment school for teens in foster care.
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Webber grew up in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, nestled in the bosom of a cohesive family headed by a Protestant minister. What makes this memoir more than a nostalgia fest, though, is the milieu. When he was nine, Webber's father moved the family from the tweedy Upper West Side to do God's work in East Harlem, where the author stood out as a blond, blue-eyed anomaly among his black and Puerto Rican neighbors. Webber's numerous bouts with reverse discrimination (as when a community newspaper rejects his help: No blancos!) lend piquancy to what might otherwise have been a rather predictable chronicling of the historical milestones marking a baby boomer's coming-of-age, from the launch of Sputnik to the March on Washington to JFK's assassination. What satisfies here is less the fresh sociological perspective, though, than the author's palpable evocation of life in el Barrio--conveyed through incidents like celebrating Independence Day with a Puerto Rican pig roast or being tutored in the fine art of "diddy-bopping" (swaggering to a silent beat) by a street-smart friend. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743247507
• ISBN 13: 9780743247504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288