Heather Kristin On Growing Up In Hell’s Kitchen
By BrooklynTheBorough
Writer Heather Kristin reads at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Crown Heights, on May 10, 2010. Read her essay about growing up in Hell’s Kitchen for the New 8 Million series.
Writer Heather Kristin reads at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Crown Heights, on May 10, 2010. Read her essay about growing up in Hell’s Kitchen for the New 8 Million series.
Our weekly listing of readings and literary events around Brooklyn. From sports writing to racketeering on the waterfront, events this week offer something for everyone. Click through for details.
“Matt is impossible today,” his teacher said when she wearily passed him off to me. I could only see a 4-year-old whose large, frightened eyes were wet with tears. He looked lost and lonely and I immediately found myself wanting to shelter him. I was a 23-year-old kid myself, barely paying rent on a rundown railroad in Bushwick. This was the first real job I had landed, yet I was only a novice, an uncertified preschool librarian in Brownsville.
People tend to talk to each other out on the pier. It’s just an assembly of pilings and mortar. Walk back out onto Rockaway Avenue and strangers pass with their eyes focused elsewhere. Maybe it’s the horizon or the water itself, or maybe it’s some ancient agreement, like the Canarsies (or whoever) would put their differences aside at the fishing hole. Cuz hey— folks gotta eat.
This essay by Heather Kristin is the first in our non-fiction series The New 8 Million, chronicling the lives of New Yorkers in their own words. Besides being a native of this fair city, Heather Kristin is a memoirist, novelist, playwright, violinist, composer, ex-actress, former subway performer and new mom who is currently writing a memoir about growing up in New York City. Here is an excerpt.
Introducing The New Eight Million: A series of essays about becoming and living the existence of a New Yorker. We’re here to ask, what’s worth knowing about those who spend their lives in our fair city? Click through to learn more about how to submit your original non-fiction for this new series.
Author David Goodwillie reads from his novel American Subversive at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Crown Heights.
