Nelson George

CITY KID: BookPage Review
By Nelson | march 20, 2009 | Post a comment

“Living for the City: Nelson George grew up in very different surroundings, in the projects of Brownsville in Brooklyn, where he and his kid sister were raised in a single-parent household. City Kid: A Writer’s Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success traces George’s ascent to influential journalist, author (books on hip-hop, Motown and more) and filmmaker (he is the writer-director of the HBO movie Life Support, based on his sister’s battle with HIV). In a direct but passionate writing style, George recounts what it was like to be young, black, poor – and driven.

A voracious reader at nine, and an avid collector of Marvel Comics, at 14, George sent a dollar bill to the Literary Guild and was rewarded with volumes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Wolfe. He wrote and filed away short stories, worked on the high school newspaper and escaped the projects, moving to a near-middle-class neighborhood. He was becoming a student of film (Sidney Poitier was a role model), but music was his passion. George credits the Motorola stereo in the family living room for early on becoming ‘my passport, not simply to records, but to the vast nation outside New York that the music came from.’ He listened and studied the credits of the Stax, Motown and Tamla records in his mother’s collection.

While attending a local college he wrote for a black newspaper and was a Billboard stringer. He also climbed the freelance ladder, by bringing his cultural sensibility to articles on black artists and black sounds, including the explosive hip-hop scene. City Kid puts the reader at the pulsating fault line of the seismic shakeup of black movies and music in the 1980s and 1990s. It also has quiet virtues – including the joy of discovering through reading and writing.” – Pat H. Broeske (April 2009 Bookpage.com)

more info on Nelson George's upcoming City Kid appearances:

April 2nd, 2009 – Vertigo Books (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=55644155078&ref= / http://www.vertigo-books.com/)
Sumner School 1201 17th St., NW (17th & M St.), Washington DC 630pm

Monday, April 6th, 2009
Hue-Man Bookstore 2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd btwn 125th & 124th NYC 6pm-8pm

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
Barnes & Noble Brooklyn Heights 106 Court St btwn State & Schermerhorn BKNY 7pm-9pm

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Marcus Bookstore 9300 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd btwn Brockhurst & 32nd St. Oakland, CA 630pm-830pm

Thursday, April 16th, 2009
Book Soup 8818 Sunset Blvd. btwn Larrabee & Holloway West Hollywood, CA 7pm-9pm
The Root Down @ Little Temple 4519 Santa Monica & Virgil Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA 9pm –

Friday, April 17th, 2009
Eso Won Books 4331 Degnan Blvd. btwn 43rd St. & 43rd Pl. Los Angeles, CA 7pm-9pm

May 13th, 2009 - Brooklyn Historical Society

note: for instore appearances most stores require books be purchased onsite.

Urban Romances © 2009
http://nelsondgeorge.net/

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