By Lee Stringer

Reviewed by Ginger B.

In the spring of 1985, Lee Stringer, through a series of self-imposed, fairly destructive life changing decisions, finds himself being evicted from his one room apartment, and “Half an hour later I’m on the street, clutching a voucher for all that remains of my worldly possessions. Only instead of feeling put out, I feel strangely relieved. Elated even. I have just been released, I realize, from all earthly claims upon me. …Off to the freedom of the streets! Off to whatever happens next.” The next two hundred pages or so are stories about “what happens…

“Sleepaway School”

by Lee Stringer

Reviewed by Ginger B.

“We wee people were all at risk. Every mother’s son of us. Even those of us with overflowing larders and soft, warm beds. Our young hearts like leaves in the wind, we all had to face down the inner turmoil of being, simply children. We were all on shaky ground.”

These few sentences, written in the preface of this memoir, give the reader a taste of what is to follow in this personal, yet often matter-of-fact description of the adolescent struggles of a troubled, young, poor, black boy in an environment that is often inclined…

They say relapse is a part of recovery. And when I first started hearing it, it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me. That was back when I still thought of recovery as an exercise of will; that you make your decision, get the help needed if you need it, then hunker down and bully your way through to the end. Relapsing didn’t seem to fit into that picture at all.
I was 47 years old and, after the ravages of a 12 year love/hate affair with the crack pipe, didn’t have nickel to my name. Nor a…

Lee Stringer is a writer (Wow! Is he ever a writer), a lecturer, a teacher and a recovering crack addict. He is the author of 3 books, “Grand Central Winter”, “Sleepaway School”, and “Like Shaking Hands with God”, which will be presented one by one when I can find enough accolades to accommodate them. While you are waiting, sample this appetizer.

A Miracle on 14th Street

In may of 1997 I threw in the towel. After 12 years at it I’d had enough of sucking on a crack pipe, enough of hustling the streets, enough of the endless cyclical ellipse of blasting…