Book Review: High Rise Stories: Voices From Chicago Public Housing by Andrey Petty

High Rise Stories: Voices From Chicago Public Housing
by Audrey Petty (363.5 Hig)

What do you think of when you hear the words “high-rise public housing”? Broken elevators and gangs? Crowded spaces, limited resources? Vandalism? Graffiti? Boarded up windows? Garbage piling up? Guns and drugs?

 

Or do you think, Neighbors? Community? Stopping in to an auntie’s apartment for dinner? Playing hopscotch in the halls? Good Times with friends and family?

 

Sometimes heart-warming, often heart-wrenching, High Rise Stories: Voices From Chicago Public Housing introduces a dozen former residents and shares their stories. For the history minded, it also includes appendices of the timeline of Chicago Public Housing, a glossary, and several essays. A lot to think about and to learn. Originally published in 2010, concurrent with the demolition of the last of the high rise public housing buildings, High Rise Stories lets the people who lived there tell their stories of making public housing their homes, sharing both the good and the bad of their times there.

 

It seems predictable that large congregations of people living in poverty will manifest in crimes, unhappiness, and untenable living situations, especially when combined with deteriorating buildings and disappearing maintenance. What wasn’t so predictable to me, was the affection so many residents had for their community and their homes. The shared hardships fostered relationships between survivors. In the face of unbearable situations, many of these narratives demonstrate the strength of the human heart to connect, and to hope. Through their stories, we bear witness to unforgettable moments in the residents’ lives. Tragic moments, frustrating moments, and yet, also times of family and friends, good food, and community.

(If you found this book interesting you might also want to check out: High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing by Ben Austen — a similar book to High Rise Stories, including some of the same people. Also available as an ebook and audiobook through Hoopla, The Interrupters — a movie available on Hoopla; it’s a documentary about a group of people who are taking action to control and “interrupt” the cycle of violence in Public Housing, especially in Chicago, Public Housing Myths by (various authors) — another Hoopla ebook, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson or Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905-64 by H. Peter Oberlander — available through Interlibrary Loan; recounts the life of one of the U.S.’s early public housing advocates and planners. Her 1934 book “Modern Housing” was groundbreaking in the US. Many more articles are accessible through the library’s EBSCO journal database…)

( official High Rise Stories page on the official Audrey Petty web site )

 

Recommended by Carrie K.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

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