Flying over 96th Street : Memoir of an East Harlem White Boy

Rating:
Summary: Much to learn from this story
Review: An amazing book about a white boy growing up in East Harlem --with his family the only white family in the projects where they live. Vivid and touching, personal and curiously global, like The Color of Water, you get an insider's view of a biracial community and feel powerfully the great strengths and the huge challenges facing this community and white/black relations. I highly recommend to anyone interested in New York, in race relations and in human relationships.

Rating:
Summary: Meaningful lessons on coming of age, race, identity and love
Review: Flying over 96th Street encourages the reader to examine race and relationships. It challenges the reader to look beyond the color of one's skin and examine what happens when you allow yourself to trust and love others who neither look like you or who at first glance seem so different.

A must read for those yearning to explore their relationship with others - and a exceptional message for young people - encouraging them to reach beyond their small circle, embrace and take the risk to love others who "appear" so different.

Rating:
Summary: A Great (and important) Story
Review: Flying Over 96th Street is a great read. Tom Webber tells his story in with humor and remarkable powers of observation. As a New Yorker, I loved the details of "El Bario".. But you don't have to be a New Yorker to get into the experience of this young guy who goes "beyond the looking glass" of the white middle class world into another reality-- where HE is the minority...

Even though race and class is rarely (if ever) being discussed nationally, it is a core issue of who we are as Americans. And for those of us who talk about it, it is often just that-- talk. Kudos to the generations of the Webber family who put their neighborhood where their mouth is...

Rating:
Summary: Most Moving Memoir
Review: Flying over 96th Street is the most moving memoir I have ever read. It tells the story of a white young boy growing up in Spanish Harlem durnig the 50s and early 60s and how he and his new black and Puerto Rican friends grow to appreciate, help, teach, and love each other. It is a totally absorbing account of coming of age and should be read by every high school student in america.

Rating:
Summary: Moving, Empathetic Memoir
Review: Webber's portrait of New York in the 1950s and 60s is full of vivid description. He captures the sounds and smells of his neighborhood and, more importantly, draws his characters with an empathetic brush. Yet the book is not just an elegy to a time past. Dr Webber deals deftly and incisevely with class, race and prejudice, while never preaching or teaching. Every page is full of delights. It is a deeply touching book that will rank as one of the great New York City memoirs.