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Growing Up Poor and White in New York City by Steve Bruni

Paperback, Published in Jul 2007 by America Star Books

ISBN10: 1424181313 | ISBN13: 9781424181315

Page count: 182

As the child of middle class, Italian-American parents, living in a modest, homogeneous neighborhood, my life seemed full of promise. I could become anything if I worked hard enough. When I was nine, my father died, leaving my twenty-nine-year-old mother to raise my six-year-old brother and me. We had to move to the East New York section of Brooklyn, a crime-ridden, drug-infested neighborhood, and start life all over in a housing project, a development for the poorest people in the richest city in America. Life became a struggle. Even going to school seemed like guerilla warfare, fighting my way home every day. Being one of the only white families in the projects was cultural shock and the turning point of my life. I understand what being a minority feels like.