Authorpreneur Dashboard – Joe William Montaperto
The Edge of Whiteness
Biographies & Memoirs
1969. Brooklyn smolders in the volatile aftermath of the recent race riots. The family of young Joey Montaperto flees their beloved Italian neighborhood for a New Jersey suburb so painfully white that it makes the TV show "My Three Sons" seem exotic. Ironically, when the high school there is then later forcefully integrated, the sensitive Joey is confronted with an even more brutal racial conflict. Unexpectedly rescued from a hallway ambush by a Na-Na, a murderous but artistic loner though, he is subsequently introduced to a fascinating new world of hip black culture. Finding his soul and "soul" in the writings of Malcolm X, a doomed first love affair with a sizzling but heroin plagued Puerto Rican hairdresser, and ultimately a spiritual journey into the teachings of Islam - it causes a major conflict within his Italian Catholic family, and the Mafia restaurant where he is employed as a dishwasher.
Book Bubbles from The Edge of Whiteness
The Edge of Whiteness
This is the first chapter and shows what a culture shock it was first to move out of Brooklyn, where i didn't even know anything else existed besides the neighborhood Italian culture, and then being thrown into a totally different scene in Roselle. Despite my cousins being right across the street, I felt completely alienated from the rest of the people in the town, and it was a struggle to adjust. This sets up how "white" the town was and what a big change it was to go to a high school that was historically being integrated. At least, I had grown up in Brooklyn up to that point, but these other truly white kids had no frame of reference. It was a point in time when the civil rights movement had picked up speed and spread all over the country, and tensions ran very high as black kids and white kids were not used to being in the same places together. It took some time to get this all sorted out, but right then, it was a brave new world, and black kids were rightfully angry and probably insecure themeselves.
