Talk Bronx New York

Lack of a school library puts senior Luis Figueroa at a disadvantage.

Hundreds of Bronx high school students have been unable to use their library for more than a year because of renovations - and now it’s being stripped of books, computers and furniture.

School Construction Authority architects showed school staff renovation plans in the spring of 2007. Renovations were to be performed during the summer so that the library would be ready to open in the fall of that year, but the work has not begun. Read more..

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NYC child sex abuse prosecutor writes book

Jill Starishevsky, a prosecutor with the Bronx District Attorney’s office, poses on the steps of the Bronx Supreme court in New York Wednesday, June 23, 2008. Starishevsky has written a children’s book, titled “My Body,” to help parents and kids deal with sexual abuse.

Prosecutor Jill Starishevsky was working on the case of a little girl who had been consistently raped by her stepfather when she got the idea on how she could help families prevent such horrific acts.

The girl, from a middle-class home in the Bronx, was molested starting at age 6, and like most children, she didn’t tell anyone. Then she watched an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that happened to be on children who were beaten. The message at the end of the show was simple: If you’re being abused, tell a parent of a teacher.

Something clicked for girl, who by then was 9 years old and had endured repeated rapes for three years. She told her teacher the next day.

The case highlighted an acute problem: Children don’t know they should speak up, because the topic of child sex abuse just isn’t discussed.

“I thought, either Oprah needs to end every show with ‘If you’re being hurt you need to tell someone,’ or someone needs to do something,” Starishevsky said. “All Oprah had to do was say ‘tell a teacher,’ and this horrible abuse stopped.”

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Bronx’s last independent bookstore to close

Paperbacks Plus owner Fern Jaffe will close her bookstore at the end of the month after nearly four decades in business.

After nearly four decades, a literary giant is entering its final chapter.

Paperbacks Plus, a Bronx community bookstore on Riverdale Ave., is set to close its doors at the end of this month.

“It’s been 38 years, time to let someone else take over,” said owner Fern Jaffe, with a good-natured laugh.

Jaffe and a friend opened the shop in 1970, seeing it grow into a neighborhood fixture that is touted as the Bronx’s only independent bookstore.

Over the years, Paperbacks Plus has hosted numerous book parties, drawing such big-name authors as Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison, Ed Koch, Pete Hamill, Frank and Malachy McCourt, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Roger Kahn, Carol Higgins and Mary Higgins Clark.

And it became a vehicle for Jaffe’s activist streak.

“We were a real community bookstore. If there were issues in the community, we took a stand on them,” she said. “We put ourselves out there politically.”

When “The Pentagon Papers” were published, Jaffe sent 100% of the book’s sales to the Friends of Daniel Ellsberg, a group formed to support the U.S. State Department officer who leaked the secret government reports on the Vietnam War.

When Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwah against author Salman Rushdie and anyone who sold his book “The Satanic Verses,” Jaffe kept the book on her shelves.

Recently, Jaffe fought against a Patriot Act provision that would have required her to hand over lists of customers’ purchases at the government’s request.

“I used to say I should have been a lawyer because of all my activism,” she said. “But I channeled that energy into putting the right books into people’s hands instead. Books can change people’s lives.”

It wasn’t all heavy political statements though. There were more light-hearted times, too.

For instance, every Yankee baseball player-cum-author has held a book signing at Paperbacks Plus, including Yogi Berra, Paul O’Neill and Derek Jeter.

“Every Yankee player who’s ever come through here has been super nice to everyone, especially the kids,” Jaffe recalled. “They made you proud.”

A true Bronxite, Jaffe grew up in Mount Eden, went to Public School 70 and graduated from Taft High School. She moved to Riverdale in 1966 with her husband, Martin Jaffe, and their two children.

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Author Abraham Rodriguez delves into Barrio noir in “South by South Bronx”

A mysterious blond appears naked in the bed of an aimless man who has frequent blackouts. She’s got a pair of Manolo Blahniks, a secret and a gun.

This scenario would fit right in with the hardboiled detective novels from the 1950s, the ones starring cynical gumshoes like Mike Hammer or Philip Marlowe.

Instead, it’s the opening to Abraham Rodríguez’s new novel, “South by South Bronx” (Akashic Books, $15.95), which intersects concerns about terrorism, changes in the drug trade and gentrification with Hitchcockian double-crosses and a mountain of cash.

The novel, Rodríguez’s third, takes the Bronx-born writer’s longtime concerns about Puerto Rican identity and street-level realism and meshes them with the structure of a classic pulp fiction narrative.

“It wasn’t a conscious thing, ‘I’m going to do a mystery book,’” says Rodríguez, whose first novel, the gritty and lyrical “Spidertown,” was published in 1994.

“I always wanted to do something with a Puerto Rican cop, and I’m obsessed with the concept of dragging Puerto Ricans into Americana,” he adds over the phone from Northern California, where he began his book tour last week.

Tonight at 7, Rodríguez will be reading at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca, 97 Warren St. — the first of five book presentations in New York (see below).

“South by South Bronx” is divided into two narratives, set off by the use of different typefaces.

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A Sidewalk Pope in The Bronx

Pope Benedict XVI will be in the Bronx on Sunday morning when he celebrates Mass at Yankee Stadium. But a short distance away, he has been making appearances all week on the sidewalk in front of the Mount Carmel Catholic Book Shop, at 627 East 187th Street.

It is actually his cardboard likeness, placed in front of the store by Neil Fusco, a co-owner of the shop. Judged by the reactions of passers-by, it pleases many people with no tickets to any pope-related events this weekend. They speak to the pope’s likeness or genuflect or stop and pay their respects, on this block next to the many Italian restaurants and bakeries on Arthur Avenue.

“For a lot of people, it’s as close as they’re going to come to meeting the pope,” Mr. Fusco said.

“Everyone wants a piece of the pope while he’s here,” he added.

Aside from communing with the life-size cutout, one can also connect with the pope by stepping inside the shop and picking up a memento of the pope’s visit.

Mr. Fusco is selling “Property of Pope Benedict” T-shirts and “I Love Pope Benedict” bumper stickers, as well as coffee mugs and aromatic “Pope-Pourri” pillows bearing the pope’s likeness. The stuff has been going like hotcakes, he said. It is a perfect example of how the pope offers spiritual guidance but also lets his followers with their livelihoods.

“He’s really providing for us,” Mr. Fusco said.

SOURCE: NYTimes.com Read more..

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