145th Street: Short Stories

A salty, wrenchingly honest collection of stories set on one block of 145th Street. We get to know the oldest resident; the cop on the beat; fine Peaches and her girl, Squeezie; Monkeyman; and Benny, a fighter on the way to a knockout. We meet Angela, who starts having prophetic dreams after her father is killed; Kitty, whose love for Mack pulls him back from the brink; and Big Joe, who wants a bang-up funeral while he's still around to enjoy it. Some of these stories are private, and some are the ones behind the headlines. In each one, characters jump off the page and pull readers right into the mix on 1-4-5.

This is a great, honest, and well-written story collection for young readers. My daughter was reading it with her 8th grade English class and I decided to get myself a copy. She and I exchanged a few of our favorite stories and were able to have some great discussions as well as share our perspectives - definitely worth checking out!

2P, 3Q

While some of the stories here are marvelous, I felt the quality was uneven. When Myers is on, he's on brilliantly, but not all the stories are brilliant.

Quotes:

from Angela's Eyes:

"The wind, whistling across the vacant lots and through the redbrick and fire escape canyons of the neighborhood, had taken another summer. Old men brought out their faded suit jackets and moved their domino games inside. Theresa, the mother of Angela Luz Colon, finally emerged from her grief and called the factory where she had worked before her husband, Fernando, had been killed. They told her she could come back to work, and she did.

That is not to say that she had stopped crying against the wall at night or stopped reaching out her hand in the show more darkness to where he had lain by her side for so many years. It was just that she had also begun to rise, once she had watched the gray mist of twilight give way to early sun, and leave for work. "

from A Christmas Story:

"Well, honey, let me tell you something. You don't survive, and that's what I been doing all these years, you don't survive sitting around expecting folks to act right.....'Cause the more you expect the more you get your heart broke up. But you got to be ready when they do act right because that's what makes the surviving worth surviving..." - Mother Fletcher show less

A collection of short stories about various young people and their neighbors living in Harlem. Angela’s dreams appear to predict people’s deaths after her father dies. Mack is the confident school jock who loses his foot in a shooting accident; its up to his girlfriend Kitty to bring him out of his depression. Big Joe decides to enjoy his funeral while he’s still alive. Monkeyman stands up to gang members.

So this is my intro to Walter Dean Myers, who everyone recommends to middle schoolers. My son (7th grade) and I read the first two stories. Very urban setting, nothing we could relate to, and the stories were the type that just makes you wonder why we just read that. It's like a kid telling you the story of a shoot out in the neighborhood in great detail (without any better use of language than a kid on the street narrating over, say, a hot dog) and then he concludes describing how it culminated in a dead dog, a dead kid, and some scared cops, and you're like, "Well, that was refreshing." I guess Myers does at least try to show significance at the end of the stories that are a little deeper, but these really are issues that my white show more suburban kid isn't really interested in right now. Neither of us care to finish the collection. show less

Meyers's collection of short stories brings the humor and tragedy of the in the lives of the residents of 145th street. The character in each story lives out the Harlem neighborhood. Big Joe plans his funeral before he dies, Kitty and Mack share their love story, and Angela forsees impending death. The fight works tirelessly to provide for his family, an elderly resident teaches a white police officer of compassion, and a young resident rides the wave of success and good luck. The characters come together for a "Block Party" and share their lives in a very human place. Though the language in the text is gritty and straight-forward and the themes are understated, the text is a good resources for exploring the resiliency of human beings show more and the co-existence of sorrow and joy.
The History and Purpose of the Short Story
http://www.teachertube.com/video/short-stories-262947
In the curriculum, I use some of the stories as paired readings with excerpts from "A Raisin in the Sun" or "The House on Mango Street" in order to explore multicultural themes. show less

4P
"That's what life of 145th Street is like. Something funny happens, like Big Joe's funeral, and then something bad happens. It's almost as if the block is reminding itself that like is hard, and you have to take it seriously." (p. 12)