Ocean State Libraries

Traces the author's upbringing in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, describing the strict rules that governed her life, arranged marriage at the age of seventeen, and the birth of her son, which led to her plan to leave and forge her own path in life.

In 1958, young Sheila Weller was living a charmed life with her family in Beverly Hills. Her father was a brilliant brain surgeon. Her mother was a movie-magazine writer whose brother owned Hollywood's most dazzling nightclub, Ciro's. Then her world exploded after she witnessed her uncle's brutal attempt to kill her father. In Dancing at Ciro's, Weller has written a deeply felt memoir of her family's life contrasted with those most glamorous days...

In this eloquent and glorious memoir, reporter Joseph Berger reflects upon his days growing up in Manhattan's Upper West Side following World War II. Berger and his family, Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, arrived in New York in 1950. Their fascinating story of adaptation in a strange, new world speaks universally of the trials millions of American immigrants have faced.

Patricia Volk’s delicious memoir lets us into her big, crazy, loving, cheerful, infuriating and wonderful family, where you’re never just hungry–your starving to death, and you’re never just full–you’re stuffed. Volk’s family fed New York City for one hundred years, from 1888 when her great-grandfather introduced pastrami to America until 1988, when her father closed his garment center restaurant. All along,...

Recounts the author's experiences after her fundamentalist Jewish family cut her off at the age of sixteen for exchanging letters with a male friend traces her downward spiral into promiscuity and self-destruction in New York City.