ZIP CODE 48209 Where you start means a lot

"Where you start means a lot" is an understatement. It includes your DNA, where you were born and grew up, parents, family, one's physical, social, psychological, and emotional environments, things you don't have any control over, and things that you don't realize until you are older.

My parents immigrated from Sweden. I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Detroit. This book focuses on my "start", birth through high school, but it echoes the common experiences of first generation kids growing up in an urban setting in the mid to late 1950s. My memories of this time are presented as vignettes containing haibun and tanka prose* or their approximations. Haibun is prose followed by a haiku or senryu. Tanka prose is prose followed by a tanka. For the approximations, it's prose followed by the short poetry styles of Rabindranath Tagore, Rumi or Piet Heim's Grooks. The poetry serves many functions depending on the story, for example, a reflection or introspection, an observation, a generalization, a summary, or humor. Haiga and tanka art are also utilized. Haiga has an image with an associated short poem - haiku or senryu. An image with tanka is still looking for a name, but often called tanka-art. A variety of digital art collage images and family photographs are also included.