Parallel Time

February 1, 1994
Staples forcefully relates a harrowing tale of growing up in a world of violence and uncertainty in the black neighborhoods of Chester, Pennsylvania. Because of his father's drinking problem, rent payments were always in arrears, so his large family was constantly moving from one apartment to another. Schooling was haphazard. Somehow, almost through a fluke, he went on to college, earned an advanced degree, and thus gained entry to a professional world dominated by white people. This book, reflecting his early experiences and his current ambivalence about his loyalties and sense of self, were triggered by the murder of his brother, who had become a drug dealer. Writing in the street language of his youth, he describes some of the strengths of black society before the infiltration of the drug culture. This powerful account is recommended for most collections.-- Carol R. Glatt, VA Medical Ctr. Lib., Philadelphia

October 1, 1994
YA-The story of a man's journey from his childhood in a mixed-race factory town to a position on the editorial staff of The New York Times. The oldest of nine children born to a hard-drinking man and saintly woman, Staples describes how his early years were marked by frequent moves to avoid eviction, hijinks with neighborhood pals, and a keen sense of observation. In high school, although eligible for college prep courses, he elected the safer bet, commercial studies. A chance meeting with a professor at Penn Morton College, who arranged for his entry into an academic boot camp, expanded his opportunities. Employment in the predominantly white world of journalism followed his advanced degree. Students will empathize with the universal adolescent concerns and experiences, and witness Staples's anger at prejudice he encounters as well as his angst as he strives to understand the world and his place in it.-Barbara Hawkins, Oakton High School, Fairfax, VA

January 31, 1994
In spare, affecting prose, Staples, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times , here recalls his hardscrabble boyhood in the mostly black world of Chester, Pa., and the pains and privileges of later joining a middle-class, whiter milieu. The oldest son among nine children, the author feared his violent alcoholic father but gained a nascent writer's sensibility from the kitchen rhythms of his mother and her friends. As if reflecting the dislocations of his 1960s youth, Staples sketches numerous fragments: his older sister slipping toward delinquency, the challenge by bullies at a new school, the untimely shooting death of his cousin. With wry hindsight he recalls his Black Power activism before he took advantage of a scholarship to a local college and won a graduate scholarship to the University of Chicago. The book ends with the first success of Staples's journalism career, which is paralleled with the death of his drug-dealing brother Blake in 1983. He observes resonantly that chance and complexity, not a simple morality tale, must be factored into any accounting for their divergent paths.